PAMP

Where it comes from

Made in

Adrenal medulla, heart, vessels and brain, cut from the same precursor as adrenomedullin

Sent out by

With adrenomedullin

Acts on

• Sympathetic nerve endings
• Adrenal chromaffin cells
• Blood vessels

What it does

• Lowers blood pressure by stopping noradrenaline release from sympathetic nerves ¹
• Inhibits catecholamine release from the adrenal medulla, as adrenomedullin does not ¹
• Kills bacteria and fungi in the laboratory, and its short C-terminal piece does it better than the whole peptide ³

In medicine

• No test and no medicine. MR-proADM, the assay hospitals use, measures a different stretch of the same precursor and says nothing about PAMP
• Plasma PAMP is reported to be higher in essential hypertension and in phaeochromocytoma, from a handful of research assays and small series
• Its receptor is not settled. MRGPRX2 responds to it in cells, and that is the receptor behind the flushing some injected medicines cause, so anything built on PAMP would have that to answer for ²

Beyond the body’s own use

• It was found in 1994 by asking what else the adrenomedullin precursor yields, and its blood-pressure-lowering effect was shown in rats in the same paper ¹
• The antimicrobial work is all in the dish: cell selectivity and membrane mechanism have been described, with no animal infection model behind them ³
• Nothing is in trials. What would settle its place is simple and still missing: an animal that makes adrenomedullin but not PAMP, since the two always come from one precursor ¹