“…While it is known that a decrease in gastric mucosal blood flow be low a critical level limits local oxygen deliv ery and decreases acid secretion, the con verse is not true, as increased mucosal blood flow does not augment acid secretion [23,24]. This suggests a supportive and permis sive role of mucosal blood flow in acid secre tion [25], PKC inhibitors are vasodilatory in the cerebral cirulation [26], However, this property, if present in the gastric circulation, should not predictably alter acid secretion [23,24], In contrast, PKC activators, such as phorbol esters, have vasoconstrictive proper ties in vivo which are reversed by staurosporine, a PKC inhibitor [27], With increasing doses of phorbol-12-13-dibutyrate between 5 and 5,000 ng/kg/min, arterial vasoconstric tion has been shown to increase progressive ly, whereas no effect was observed with PD [27], Although a nonspecific vascular effect of TPA might contribute to a decrease in acid secretion, the effective concentration of TPA in our study, 0.34 ng/kg/min, was 15-fold lower than the lowest dose used in the aforementioned study [27], Moreover, the blood pressure was unaffected by all com pounds utilized in our study.…”