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Concept
History of catecholamine research
Summary
The catecholamines are a group of neurotransmitters composed of the endogenous substances dopamine, noradrenaline (norepinephrine), and adrenaline (epinephrine), as well as numerous artificially synthesized compounds such as isoprenaline - an anti-bradycardiac medication. Their investigation constitutes a major chapter in the history of physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology. Adrenaline was the first hormone extracted from an endocrine gland and obtained in pure form, before the word hormone was coined. Adrenaline was also the first hormone whose structure and biosynthesis was discovered. Second to acetylcholine, adrenaline and noradrenaline were some of the first neurotransmitters discovered, and the first intercellular biochemical signals to be found in intracellular vesicles. The β-adrenoceptor gene was the first G protein-coupled receptor to be cloned.
British physician and physiologist Henry Hyde Salter (1823–1871) included a chapter on treatment "by stimulants" in a book on asthma which was first published in 1860. He noted the benefits of strong coffee, presumably because it dispelled sleep, which favored asthma. Even more impressive to him, however, was the response to "strong mental emotion": "The cure of asthma by violent emotion is more sudden and complete than by any other remedy whatever; indeed, I know few things more striking and curious in the whole history of therapeutics. The cure takes no time; it is instantaneous, the intersect paroxysm ceases on the instant." The retrospective interpretation is that the "cure′′ was due to the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands.
At the same time, the French physician Alfred Vulpian also made discoveries about the adrenal medulla. Material scraped from the adrenal medulla turned green when ferric chloride was added. This did not occur with the adrenal cortex nor with any other tissue. Vulpian even came to the insight that the substance entered "le torrent circulator" ("the circulatory torrent"), as blood from the adrenal veins did give the ferric chloride reaction.
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