Table 3.

Intracellular calcium levels (as relative fluorescence) in cells from control and ligated glands examined in vitro. Cells were loaded with the dye Fluo 4-AM and then monitored by confocal microscope for intensity changes following incubation with different concentrations of methacholine. At the end of experiments cells were incubated with ionomycin to induce the maximum fluorescence. Thus relative fluorescence was determined as (fluorescence − minimum)/(maximum signal − minimum). The results are the mean ± SEM of five different ligation experiments with two preparations of each gland containing 5 to 10 cells and were compared by non-paired t-tests.

		10−8m		10−7m		10−6m
	Baseline	Peak	Plateau	Peak	Plateau	Peak	Plateau
Control	0.09 ± 0.01	0.47 ± 0.04	0.29 ± 0.02	0.73 ± 0.04	0.47 ± 0.03	0.90 ± 0.03	0.62 ± 0.02
Number	58	44		58		58
Ligated	0.11 ± 0.01	0.57 ± 0.04	0.38 ± 0.03	0.78 ± 0.04	0.54 ± 0.03	0.97 ± 0.02	0.64 ± 0.02
Number	59	37		59		59
P value	n.s.	n.s.	P < 0.05	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.