Acid-Evoked Currents in Cardiac Sensory Neurons: A Possible Mediator of Myocardial Ischemic Sensation

Sensory neurons that innervate the heart sense ischemia and mediate angina. To use patch-clamp methods to study ion channels on these cells, we fluorescently labeled cardiac sensory neurons (CSNs) in rats so that they could later be identified in dissociated primary culture of either nodose or dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Currents evoked by a variety of different agonists imply the importance of lowered pH (