The roles of aldosterone in the progression of heart failure have not been fully elucidated. This study examined whether aldosterone nongenomically activates reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, causing myocyte apoptosis. Addition of aldosterone to neonatal rat cardiac myocytes caused the activation of NADPH oxidase and intracellular ROS production in a dose-dependent manner...
Adiponectin is a recently discovered protein that seems to be exclusively secreted by adipocytes and is the most abundant adipose tissue–derived protein. While some recent studies have demonstrated an association between adiponectin levels and hypertension, these studies were cross-sectional in design, and the results have been inconsistent. Therefore we performed a prospective...
Hypertension is one of the greatest risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but the contribution of high blood pressure to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality is weakened with aging. In the present study, we examined whether high blood pressure would be a risk factor for total and cardiovascular mortality in a group of very elderly Japanese. Six hundred and thirty-nine...
Stroke is sometimes seen in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). The factors that best predict incident stroke in hospitalized CHF patients are not well known. We performed this pilot study to explore the clinical markers of incident stroke in CHF patients. We studied 111 hospitalized patients with CHF (mean age, 67±11 years). Ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring...
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and thus is a major worldwide public health problem. Recently, an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease equation for Japanese patients was proposed by the Japanese Society of Nephrology. However, the role of eGFR in the assessment of...
Thiazolidinediones, which stimulate peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor γ, have been shown to prevent cardiovascular injury. However, little is known about their effects on salt-sensitive hypertension. We thus investigated whether or not pioglitazone affects left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy in Dahl salt-sensitive rats, then compared its effects to those of an angiotensin...
Hypotheses about pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) have been proposed to explain the vascular damage that characterizes this disease. Reports indicate that estrogens and estrogen receptors play important physiological roles in cardiovascular diseases. There have been studies examining the association between coronary artery disease and the estrogen receptor α (ESR1) gene. The...
A 34-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital because of hypertension with hypokalemia. Her past medical history revealed that at age 24 she had been diagnosed with left renal lithiasis and had undergone extracorporeal shock-wave lithotripsy (ESWL). Physical examination showed that her peripheral pulses were intact and no peripheral edema or audible bruits were detected. Her...
To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of a new angiotensin II type 1 receptor blocker, pratosartan, in patients with mild-to-moderate essential hypertension, a multicenter, open-label study was conducted. A 2- to 4-week run-in period was followed by a 12-week core study with pratosartan monotherapy, or a combination of pratosartan with a calcium channel blocker (CCB) or...
Sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) is an important risk factor for hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. Diurnal blood pressure (BP) changes are evaluated by 24 h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM). The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between diurnal BP variation and SAS severity, as well as the impact of antihypertensive therapy on diurnal BP variation...
Alcohol-induced endothelial changes might contribute to an increase in blood pressure in regular alcohol consumers. Some antihypertensive drugs affect oxidative stress and endothelial function and might counteract the effects of alcohol at the cellular level. The aim of this study was to investigate in vitro the effects of three different types of antihypertensive agents on...
In hypertensive subjects, it has been demonstrated that the lower the blood pressure, the lower the incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, whether this relationship holds true in individuals without hypertension—that is, in individuals with a blood pressure <140/90 mmHg—remains unknown. This study was performed to assess the relationship between blood pressure and...
High physical activity or aerobic exercise training increases central arterial distensibility in older humans. However, the effect of a single bout of exercise on central arterial distensibility in older humans is unknown. Furthermore, the effect of exercise training on central arterial distensibility during exercise is unclear. We investigated whether systemic arterial...
Recent studies emphasize the role of chronic hypoxia in the kidney as a final common pathway to end-stage renal failure (ESRD). Hypoxia of tubular cells leads to apoptosis or epithelial-mesenchymal transdifferentiation, which in turn exacerbates the fibrosis of the kidney with the loss of peritubular capillaries and subsequent chronic hypoxia, setting in train a vicious cycle...
The aim of this study was to investigate whether atorvastatin inhibits epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activation in cardiomyocytes in vitro and slows the progression of cardiac remodeling induced by pressure overload in mice. Either atorvastatin (5 mg/kg/day) or vehicle was orally administered to male C57BL/6J mice with transverse aortic constriction (TAC). Physiological...
A multiple candidate-gene approach was used to investigate not only candidate genes, but also candidate pathways involved in the regulation of blood pressure. We evaluated 307 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 307 genes and performed an association study between 758 cases and 726 controls. Genes were selected from among those encoding components of signal transduction...
Guanylyl cyclase (GC)-A (natriuretic peptide receptor [NPR]-1), the receptor for atrial and brain natriuretic peptide, is important in the regulation of blood pressure in animal models and, possibly, in humans. In this study, we examined the association between dinucleotide repeat polymorphism within the 5′-flanking region of the GC-A gene and essential hypertension in a group of...
Angiotensin II type-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) are regarded as first-line treatments for type-2 diabetes with hypertension. Despite the availability of various types of ARBs, there are no comparative studies of their effects on patients with diabetes. In this open-label prospective crossover study, we compared the effects of olmesartan (20 mg/day) and telmisartan (40 mg/day...
It is well known that obesity and insulin resistance are closely related to the development of type 2 diabetes. However, the exact pathogenic mechanism underlying the insulin resistance in renal disease has not been clarified. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the contribution of abdominal (visceral and subcutaneous) fat accumulation to insulin resistance and...
Elevated morning home blood pressure (MHBP) has been reported to have a close relationship to cerebrocardiovascular events and hypertensive target organ damages, and hence is regarded as a predictor of cardiovascular events. However, there is no evidence that lowering of MHBP can improve morbidity, mortality or target organ damage. In recent guidelines, angiotensin II type-1...
The presence of cerebral white matter lesions (WMLs) on MRI is suggested to be a predictive factor for vascular dementia and stroke. To investigate the relationship between arterial stiffness and WMLs, we performed brain MRI to evaluate the presence of two subtypes of WML—periventricular hyperintensities (PVH) and deep white matter lesions (DWML)—and furthermore, determined the...
The metabolic syndrome (MS) is a common risk factor for cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes. Recently, telmisartan, an angiotensin II receptor antagonist that has an antihypertensive effect, has been reported to be a partial peroxisome proliferator−activated receptor γ (PPARγ) agonist. The anti-diabetic hormone adiponectin has been recognized as a marker of in vivo PPARγ...