Pharmacological techniques for the in vitro study of intestinal smooth muscles

The variety of techniques for pharmacological analysis that can be applied to intestinal, as to most, smooth muscle is great and growing. These techniques allow determination of pharmacological properties at all levels of organization, including molecular (not fully covered here). Users would do well to keep in mind that smooth muscles may have different properties at different levels of organization (i.e., they are not the sum of their properties as studied by reductionist techniques).