The effects of an angiotensin II (Ang II) type 1 (AT1) receptor blocker (ARB) on focal brain ischemia and atherosclerotic lesions were explored in atherosclerotic apolipoprotein E−deficient (ApoEKO) mice treated with a high-cholesterol diet (HCD). The ischemic brain area and neurological deficit 24 h after middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion were significantly greater in...
Age-related decline of plasma dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEA-S) levels may be associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease in women. We investigated whether plasma DHEA-S levels are related to endothelial function in postmenopausal women with coronary risk factors. One hundred and fifteen postmenopausal women (mean age±SD: 57±5 years; range: 48−65 years) who underwent...
It remains open to debate whether hyperinsulinemia leads to the development of hypertension. We addressed this issue by investigating the effect of chronic insulin infusion on blood pressure and related parameters in hypertensive fructose-fed rats. Rats were given either normal chow or a fructose-rich diet, and insulin or saline was infused through mini-pumps in the same animals...
The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the discrepancy between clinic and home blood pressure (BP) in hypertensive subjects would disappear or diminish in magnitude if the BP measurement was taken under controlled conditions differing only with respect to location (clinic vs. home). Three hundred and sixty-seven patients aged 34−84 years with primary hypertension...
Here we address the effect of Akt signaling on endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs). Human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were cultured on fibronectin-coated dishes in EPC differentiation medium. PBMCs differentiated in a series of three steps: proliferation for foci formation, tight attachment to the dishes in the early stages of differentiation, and maturation in the...
Although dual blockade of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) with the combination of an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACE-I) and angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) is generally well-established as a treatment for nephropathy, this treatment is not fully effective in some patients. Based on the recent evidence implicating aldosterone in renal disease...
Recently, peroxisome proliferator−activated receptor γ (PPARγ) ligands have been reported to increase nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability in vitro but not in vivo because of the difficulty of measuring plasma NO. Here, we investigated the effects of PPARγ on plasma NO concentrations using the newly developed NO sensor in angiotensin II (Ang II)−infused rabbits. Male New Zealand...
Because most angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors are excreted into urine, any decrease in renal function increases the plasma levels of these drugs. This study was designed to investigate the appropriate doses of alacepril in patients with chronic renal failure. The total plasma concentration of captopril, an active metabolite of alacepril, was measured in 47 patients with...
A water-soluble fullerene vesicle based on the Buckminsterfullerene molecule (Ph5C60K, denoted as PhK) was explored to determine its effects on anti-oxidation of human umbilical endothelial cells (HUVEC) exposed to exogenous and endogenous reactive oxygen species (ROS). Hydrogen peroxide 0.05−0.25 mmol/L remarkably reduced the cellular viability of HUVEC. This reduction in...
The Dahl salt-sensitive (DS) rat is the most prevalently used animal model of salt-sensitive hypertension. The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphisms influence blood pressure in DS rats. We produced two strains of female F1 rats, one from female DS and male Lewis rats (DL) and the other from Lewis female and DS male...
Antihypertensive therapy has been well established to reduce hypertension-related morbidity and mortality, but the optimal therapy for Japanese patients remains unknown. The Valsartan Amlodipine Randomized Trial (VART), a prospective randomized open-label trial, was designed to determine whether treatment with an angiotensin II type 1 receptor blocker (valsartan) or a calcium...
Hypertension is a common disease that greatly impacts the health of the elderly. However, the status of blood pressure (BP) control in the elderly Korean population has not yet been investigated. Subjects aged 65 years or older livings in Seongnam city, a suburb of Seoul, Korea, were included in this study. All subjects were evaluated by a physician, and medication was reviewed...
Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) has been associated with hypertension, although debate exists as to whether LVH is caused by elevated blood pressure (BP) or is a risk factor for its development. The present study evaluates the association between left ventricular structure and the development of hypertension in a young healthy population. We followed young healthy Israeli Air...
Myeloperoxidase (MPO) may play an important role not only in host defense reactions but also in local inflammations, especially in atherosclerotic diseases such as hypertensive nephrosclerosis (HN). Paradoxically, MPO-deficient mice have been reported to show increased atherosclerosis compared with wild mice, although higher MPO levels are thought to exacerbate atherosclerotic...
This study investigated the association of blood pressure with blood oxidative stress–related parameters in normotensive and hypertensive subjects. A cross-sectional design was applied to 31 hypertensive patients and 35 healthy normotensive subjects. All subjects were men between the ages of 35 and 60 years. Exclusion criteria were obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus...
Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are the recommended first-line antihypertensive treatment for managing chronic kidney disease, and strict blood pressure (BP) regulation is crucial for the reduction of proteinuria. Valsartan and candesartan are commonly used ARBs in Japan, with maximum permissible doses of 160 mg/day and 12 mg/day, respectively. We evaluated BP and...
We examined a gene polymorphism of a novel Z-disc–related protein, myospryn (cardiomyopathy-associated 5). We focused on one haplotype block associated with a tag single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that covered 16 of 27 coding SNPs with linkage disequilibrium (minor allele frequency 0.413). Screening a myospryn polymorphism (K2906N) in a general health check-up of a rural...
The objectives of this study were to determine the relationship between carotid-femoral (cfPWV) and aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV) and to compare their modulators and association with coronary artery disease (CAD). We studied 107 consecutive patients (68 men) with a mean age of 60.49±8.31 years who had stable angina and had been referred for coronary angiography. cfPWV and...
Pheochromocytoma is an infrequent secondary cause of arterial hypertension, often associated with paroxysmal headache, sweating, weight loss, and palpitations. Cardiovascular complications of pheochromocytoma include sudden death, heart failure due to toxic cardiomyopathy, and hypertensive encephalopathy. Here we report the case of a female with an acquired long-QT-syndrome as a...
We examined the association between C-reactive protein (CRP) and left ventricular mass index (LVMI), and investigated prospectively the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in asymptomatic subjects with essential hypertension. A total of 629 subjects (mean age 62 years, 51% female) free of prior CVD were included in this study. In cross-sectional analysis at baseline...
Salusin-α and salusin-β are multifunctional bioactive peptides with hypotensive and bradycardic effects. They were originally identified from full-length human cDNAs by bioinformatics analyses. Salusin peptides are expressed in human tissues at the mRNA level, but no information is available about their systemic distributions in any species. We examined the distributions of...
Hypertension and smoking are major risk factors for death due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). These attributions for CVD mortality should be higher in the countries where obesity-related conditions are uncommon. However, the joint effect of these risk factors on CVD and all-cause mortality have not been described. We followed a representative 8,912 Japanese men and women without...
Elevated superoxide formation in cardiac extracts of apolipoprotein E–knockout (apoE-KO) mice has been reported. In addition, we previously reported that hypoxia increased oxidative stress in the aortas of apoE-KO mice, although we did not examine the effect of hypoxia on the heart. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of chronic hypoxia on the left ventricular (LV...