Cigarette smoking may affect urinary albumin excretion and the glomerular filtration rate in both diabetic and nondiabetic subjects. Here we investigated the association between smoking and decreased or elevated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and albuminuria by analyzing data from 7,078 Japanese men who had undergone a general health screening between 2005 and 2006. GFR was...
The aim of this study was to evaluate whether paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF) has an impact on left atrial (LA) function in hypertensive patients and, if so, to select clinical factors influencing this relationship. Sixty-four essential hypertensive patients with PAF (group EHf) and fifty-five patients without PAF (group EH) were enrolled. Using acoustic quantification, the...
The aim of this study was to examine whether or not fluctuations in blood pressure (BP) differ by season. Subjects were 45 elderly individuals (20 men and 25 women; mean age, 66.5±4.9 [SD] years). Each subject's BP was recorded with an ambulatory BP monitoring device for 24 h during each of the four seasons. Subjects also wore a portable weather meter to obtain ambient...
Renal thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) is an uncommon vascular complication of severe hypertension. Until now, its clinical-pathological characteristics and renal survival have been unclear. Twenty-one patients with biopsy-proven renal TMA and with severe or malignant hypertension were retrospectively studied. All the patients exhibited severe hypertension, with systolic blood...
Although angiotensin II type 1 receptor blocker (ARB) therapy reduces proteinuria and retards the progression of renal injury in patients with glomerulonephritis, whether these drugs actually ameliorate pathological damages in human glomerulonephritis has not been determined. Fifteen patients with biopsy-proven mild-to-moderate mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis (10 with...
This study was designed to determine whether or not the addition of a single nighttime dose of doxazosin in extended-release form (GITS; gastrointestinal therapeutic system) would affect the autonomic modulation of the cardiovascular system in patients with uncontrolled hypertension treated with a multi-drug regimen. Resting 5-min noninvasive finger blood pressure and ECG signals...
The role of the chromosome 1 blood pressure quantitative trait locus (QTL) on the sympathorenal interaction was studied using congenic strains. The two reciprocal congenic strains, WKYpch1.0 and SHRSPwch1.0, were respectively constructed by introgressing the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHRSP)−derived fragment for the QTL into a Wistar-Kyoto rat (WKY) and vice...
The Japan Hypertension Evaluation with Angiotensin II Antagonist Losartan Therapy (J-HEALTH) study was performed to investigate the relationship between blood pressure (BP) and development of stroke or myocardial infarction (MI) in Japanese hypertensive patients. A total of 26,512 hypertensive patients (mean age: 62.2 years, 43.9% men) were analyzed. All patients received open...
We examined the effects of antihypertensive drugs, exercise training, and combinations thereof on insulin sensitivity (IS), and the association between this relation and sympathetic activity, muscle fiber composition, and capillary density in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Six-week-old male SHR were allocated to 7 groups: a control group (C), and groups treated with...
The prevalence of stage 3 to 5 chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Japan (18.7%) is considerably higher than that in the United States (4.5%). This study investigated in the Japanese general population whether this higher prevalence of CKD might reflect to a progressive decline of renal function, and in turn to the increased risk of end-stage renal disease. A decline in renal...
Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a newly recognized homolog of ACE that converts angiotensin II (Ang II) to angiotensin-1–7 (Ang-(1–7)), is found in vascular smooth muscle cells. Expression of ACE2 may be a local determinant of vascular Ang-(1–7) production and, when increased, may augment the increasingly recognized protective effects of this peptide within injured...
Salusin-α is a new bioactive peptide with mild hypotensive and bradycardic effects. Our recent study showed that salusin-α suppresses foam cell formation in human monocyte-derived macrophages by down-regulating acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase-1, contributing to its anti-atherosclerotic effect. To clarify the clinical implications of salusin-α in hypertension and its...
Chemokines promote vascular inflammation and play a pathogenic role in the development and maintenance of hypertension. In the present study, the expression of the chemokine interleukin-8/CXCL8 (IL-8/CXCL8) was investigated in cultured vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) obtained from the thoracic aorta of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats...
Increased left ventricular mass (LVM) is an independent cardiovascular risk marker, which often occurs independently of arterial blood pressure in type 2 diabetes. To investigate the factors related to the disproportionate increase in LVM in type 2 diabetes, we conducted a cross-sectional study. We studied 40 male type 2 diabetic patients aged 36 to 70 years with controlled blood...
Our objective is to examine the effects of voluntary running at different intensity levels on blood pressure, endothelium-dependent vessel dysfunction and insulin resistance in aged spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) with severe hypertension. Ten-month-old male and female SHR with severe hypertension were assigned to voluntary running at either low intensity (30% of maximal...
We evaluated our present treatment of hypertension and sought a way to improve it. We studied 164 of outpatients we treated in 2002. Mean systolic blood pressure (SBP)±SD was 142.0±11.3, and 56% of patients had SBP over 140 mmHg. We used more diuretics in patients with good control of SBP (19% vs. 7% of patients; p=0.012). After observing our hypertensive patients, we changed our...
Hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) cause endothelial dysfunction probably through increased oxidant stress. Paraoxonase (PON1) is an high-density lipoprotein (HDL)−linked anti-oxidant enzyme whose capacity is influenced by a genetic polymorphism at codon 192. In the present study we have investigated the role of PON1 polymorphism on endothelial function in subjects...
An exaggerated increase in systolic blood pressure prolongs myocardial relaxation and increases left ventricular (LV) chamber stiffness, resulting in an increase in LV filling pressure. We hypothesize that patients with a marked hypertensive response to exercise (HRE) have LV diastolic dysfunction leading to exercise intolerance, even in the absence of resting hypertension. We...
Sleep apnea syndrome, a sleep-related breathing disorder (SRBD) of which obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is representative, is often associated with obesity, and therefore patients with SRBD might have a high prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the relationship between obesity and the prevalence of CKD has not yet been investigated in a large cohort of...
Recently, middle-aged men who have begun frequently complaining of erectile dysfunction and nonspecific symptoms similar to those of postmenopausal women, visited a male climacterium clinic in Japan. Some patients, who were already taking antihypertensive medication, discontinued or reduced their dosages of antihypertensive medication after anti-depressant therapy. Forty-nine...
Angiotensin type 1 receptor blockers are more effective than other antihypertensive agents in slowing the progression of renal disease. Angiotensin II (Ang II) induces production of NAD(P)H oxidase–dependent superoxide in vascular and mesangial cells, but the direct role of Ang II in glomerular superoxide production remains unknown. Here we examined the effect of Ang II on...
Metabolic syndrome (MS) is highly prevalent and an established key risk factor for coronary artery disease, regardless of the presence or absence of diabetes mellitus (DM). Long-term follow-up studies have addressed the influence of MS with and without DM on the prognosis of patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We classified 748 consecutive patients who...
Candesartan has been reported to produce nitric oxide (NO) and to decrease oxidative stress in animal studies. We investigated candesartan's effect on the production of NO and oxidative stress as well as on carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in hypertensive patients. One-hundred age-matched hypertensive patients were enrolled into an angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) group...
The Japan Hypertension Evaluation with Angiotensin II Antagonist Losartan Therapy (J-HEALTH) study is a nationwide, prospective, multicentered, observational study that was designed to enroll 30,000 hypertensive Japanese patients from more than 3,000 private practitioners. It is the first large-scale observational study to assess the efficacy and safety of losartan, an...