In this double-blind study, 1143 hypertensive participants with type 2 diabetes and stage 1 or 2 chronic kidney disease (CKD) were randomized to receive combination aliskiren/valsartan 150/160 mg or valsartan 160 mg monotherapy for 2 weeks, with force-titration to 300/320 mg and 320 mg, respectively, for another 6 weeks. Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP), the primary outcome, ...

Background: Higher blood pressure and albuminuria are found in offspring of mothers who smoke during pregnancy. Whether or not kidney development is affected by maternal smoking is unknown. Methods: Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly allocated to twice-daily cigarettesmoke and nicotine condensate (1 mg/kg) or vehicle at day 10 of pregnancy until ...

Kidneys play a vital role in long-term regulation of blood pressure. This is achieved by actions of many renal and nonrenal factors acting on the kidney that help maintain the body's water and electrolyte balance and thus control blood pressure. Several endogenously formed or circulating hormones/peptides, by acting within the ...

Resistant hypertension affects an estimated 10-15 million American adults and is increasing in prevalence. The etiology of resistant hypertension is almost always multifactorial, including obesity, older age, high dietary salt, chronic kidney disease, and aldosterone excess. Classical primary aldosteronism and lesser degrees of aldosterone excess, possibly originating from visceral adipocytes, ...

Background. The magnetic surgical camera is an emerging technology having the potential to improve visualization without taking up port site space. However, tilting the point of view downward/upward can be done only by constantly applying a pressure on the abdomen. This study aims to test the hypothesis that the novel ...

We investigated the influence of long-term salt load on renal function in hypertensive patients. The subjects were 133 hypertensive patients (80 women and 53 men, mean age 60±9 years) who underwent at least five successful 24 h home urine collections during the 10-year observation period. Blood pressure (BP) and 24-h urinary ...

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the hypothesis that the antihypertensive action of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibition is mediated by an increased availability in intrarenal epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) with consequent improvement of renal haemodynamic autoregulatory efficiency and of the pressure-natriuresis relationship. Ren-2 transgenic rats (TGR), a model of ...

The clinical benefit of percutaneous interventional therapies for atherosclerotic renal artery stenosis (ARAS) is still obscure. Randomized trials conducted on general patient populations provided unsatisfactory results in justifying the interventional treatment. In this study, the predictive value of renal resistive index (RRI) was retrospectively analyzed in identifying the patients who ...

OBJECTIVE: Asymmetric dimethylarginine is an endogenous inhibitor of NO synthesis that may mediate cardiovascular disease. Alanine-glyoxylate aminotransferase-2 (AGXT2) has been proposed to degrade asymmetric dimethylarginine. We investigated the significance of AGXT2 in methylarginine metabolism in vivo and examined the effect of this enzyme on blood pressure. METHODS AND RESULTS: In ...

Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs) are commonly used to reduce blood pressure, left-ventricular hypertrophy, and urinary albumin excretion in patients with essential hypertension or primary aldosteronism. Effects of MRAs on hypertensive organ damage seem to occur beyond what is expected from the mere reduction of blood pressure. This suggests that activation ...

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children is a rare but devastating condition. Once a critical amount of nephron mass has been lost, progression of CKD is irreversible and results in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and need of renal replacement therapy. The time course of childhood CKD is highly variable. While ...

Hypertension and cardiovascular complications are very common in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Overactivation of sympathetic nervous system is also widely recognized in CKD. Renalase may play an important role in the control of blood pressure (BP) by its regulatory function of catecholamine metabolism. Renalase could be synthesized not only by ...

This study demonstrates that the increased potassium content in the body seems to change both the blood pressure and renal tubular function. We wanted to test the hypotheses that amiloride and spironolactone induced potassium retention reduces ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and central blood pressure (CBP) during baseline conditions and after ...

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of renal denervation on the blood pressure, plasma renalase content and expression of renalase and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) in the kidney of spontaneous hypertensive (SH) rats and to explore the mechanism of renal denervation involved in lowering blood pressure. SH ...

Pulsatile pump perfusion of potential kidneys for transplantation is known to decrease the rate of delayed graft function (DGF) and improve their 1-year survival. Flow and resistance parameters are often used to determine the suitability of kidneys for transplantation. Kidneys with low flow rates are often subjected to higher pressures ...

The kidney plays a central role in the regulation of arterial blood pressure. A large body of experimental and physiological evidence indicates that renal control of extracellular volume and renal perfusion pressure are closely involved in maintaining the arterial circulation and blood pressure. Renal artery perfusion pressure directly regulates sodium ...

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is prevalent in 3%-4% of the adult population in the United States, and the vast majority of these people are hypertensive. Compared with those with essential hypertension, hypertension in CKD remains poorly controlled despite the use of multiple antihypertensive drugs. Hypervolemia is thought to be a ...

Primary aldosteronism caused by an aldosterone producing adrenal tumor/aldosteronoma (APA), is a potentially curable form of hypertension, via unilateral adrenalectomy. Resolution of hypertension (HTN) is not as prevalent after tumor resection, as are the normalization of aldosterone secretion, hypokalemia, and other metabolic abnormalities. Here, we review the immediate and long-term ...

Hypertension has been identified as one of the causes for end stage renal failure (ESRF) and is likely to worsen kidney function. This retrospective study was carried out at a tertiary hospital in Malaysia with the objective of determining the effectiveness of combination antihypertensive drugs in hypertensive patients with ESRF ...

The study was performed on prospective donors who reported to the Department of Transfusion Medicine. Individuals deferred due to hypertension contributed the study population. They were compared with age and sex matched donor controls. Demographic details were recorded in a proforma. On identification of a hypertensive individual, consequent two comparable ...

Prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) is a major prostanoid with a wide variety of biological activities. PGE(2) can influence blood pressure (BP) both positively and negatively. In particular, centrally administered PGE(2) induces hypertension whereas systemic administration of PGE(2) produces a hypotensive effect. These physiologically opposing effects are generated by the existence of ...

Contraction of small artery (diameters typically less than 250μm) vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) plays a critical role in local control of blood flow and arterial pressure through its affect on vascular caliber. Specifically, contraction of small arteries in response to increased intraluminal pressure is referred to as the myogenic ...

We described a 19 year old female case with renovascular hypertension, whose blood pressure was high taking antihypertensive medications. The right renal artery was completely occluded at its ostium, and percutaneous transluminal renal angioplasty was unsuccessful. After aortorenal bypass surgery, blood pressure was normalized without administration of antihypertensive medication.

High-ceiling diuretics (HCD), known potent inhibitors of housekeeping Na(+),K(+),2Cl cotransporter (NKCC1) and renal-specific NKCC2, decrease [Cl(-)](i), hyperpolarize vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC), and suppress contractions evoked by modest depolarization, phenylephrine, angiotensin II, and UTP. These actions are absent in nkcc1 (/) knock-out mice, indicating that HCD interact with NKCC1 rather ...

Abstract The advent of the obesity epidemic has highlighted the need to re-assess more closely the pathophysiology of obesity-related hypertension with the aim of identifying new therapies. In this article, we review the role of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, sympathetic nervous system, and inflammation in relation to the pathophysiology of this ...

Although much attention has been paid to the role of stabilizing selection, empirical analyses testing the role of developmental constraints in evolutionary stasis remain rare, particularly for plants. This topic is studied here with a focus on the evolution of a pollen ontogenetic feature, the last points of callose deposition ...

Hypertension is one of the leading causes to develop chronic kidney disease (CKD) and could be a risk factor for progression of CKD to end stage renal disease (ESRD).Uncontrolled hypertension worsens CKD. Hypertension control may contribute to prevent CKD in early stages and retards the progression of CKD stages to ...

We present the case of a 64-year-old male patient in whom malignant phase of hypertension developed during dialysis therapy. Hypertension was resistant to pharmacological therapy with seven antihypertensive drugs and dialysis therapy with ultrafiltration. In this patient bilateral nephrectomy was performed as a rescue therapy. It led to better control ...

Patients with resistant hypertension have a higher incidence of secondary causes of hypertension compared with the general hypertensive population. It is important to screen such patients for secondary causes of hypertension because appropriate treatment can lead to improved blood pressure control or even cure these patients, and thus avoid the ...

The rat has been the most used experimental animal for studies of cardiovascular and kidney diseases. However, it is notable that there is increasing importance placed on the use of the mouse model to increase understanding of these pathophysiologies. The aim of the present study was to induce chronic kidney ...

If handling the remains of dead patients is a responsibility of your security department, or you are being pressured to take on the role because of budget cuts, the need to anticipate and plan for complications which may arise is critical, the author points out.

We investigated the effects of low-dose morphine on nitric oxide (NO) and angiogenesis in two-kidney one clip hypertensive (2K1C) rats. MALE RATS WERE DIVIDED INTO TWO GROUPS: sham-clip operated and 2K1C. Each group subdivided into saline and morphine (3 mg/kg i.p. 8 weeks) groups. Blood pressure, heart rate, plasma renin ...

A nationwide survey in the Netherlands among 600 randomly sampled practitioners revealed that the advice (1) quit smoking, (2) reduce alcohol, (3) healthy diet, and (4) physical activities was only given by 76%, 26%, 44%, and 61% of the practitioners. To confirm these data, and to study the effects of ...

Global measurements by MESSENGER of the fluxes of heavy ions at Mercury, particularly sodium (Na(+)) and oxygen (O(+)), exhibit distinct maxima in the northern magnetic-cusp region, indicating that polar regions are important sources of Mercury's ionized exosphere, presumably through solar-wind sputtering near the poles. The observed fluxes of helium (He(+)) ...

Alcohol intake has been shown to have a J-shaped association with blood pressure (BP). However, this association has not been examined in mixed race populations or in people with diabetes where tighter blood pressure control is recommended. Participants in the REGARDS study who were 45 years or older (n = ...

OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether there are differences in autonomic cardiovascular regulation in resuscitated patients undergoing therapeutic hypothermia (TH) in relation to the clinical outcome. METHOD: Between 2005 and 2007, 18 consecutive resuscitated patients were enrolled. ECG and blood pressure data were recorded for 48 h during hypothermia and warming up to ...

The aim of this survey was to investigate clinicians' current approach to the haemodynamic management and resuscitation endpoints in septic shock. This cross-sectional, self-reported questionnaire-based survey was sent to the clinical director of selected ICUs in 16 European countries. The questionnaire consisted of two parts and 25 questions. The first ...

PURPOSE: Physical examination, assessment of central venous pressure (CVP) and chest radiography are diagnostic tools for estimation of volume status in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Passive leg raising (PLR) is a test to estimate fluid responsiveness. Transpulmonary thermodilution (TPTD) is established for measurement of cardiac index (CI), global end-diastolic ...

In the concentration range that is normally achieved in humans, e.g., after the drinking of coffee or in patients treated with theophylline, the cardiovascular effects of methylxanthines are primarily due to antagonism of adenosine A(1) and A(2) receptors. Inhibition of phosphodiesterases or mobilization of intracellular calcium requires much higher concentrations. ...

OBJECTIVE:: This study was aimed to test the hypothesis that tissue hemoglobin oxygen saturation (StO2) measured non-invasively using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a reliable indicator of global oxygen delivery (DO2) measured invasively using a pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) in patients with septic shock. DESIGN:: Prospective study. SETTING:: 26-bed medical-surgical ICU, ...

A clinical comparison, of two methods of afterload assessment, has been made. The first method, systemic vascular resistance index (SVR(i)), is based upon the traditional formula for afterload which utilizes central venous pressure (CVP), as well as cardiac index (C(i)), and mean arterial blood pressure (MAP). The second method, total ...

Habitual alcohol consumption has shown positive associations with office blood pressure (BP). Less well established, however, is alcohol consumption's relationship to various measures of ambulatory BP (ABP) in healthy, normotensive persons. We investigated alcohol consumption's relationship to mean ABP, ABP variability, and the ABP arterial stiffness index in a sample ...

BACKGROUND: The relationship between smoking and hypertension is still unclear and controversial; we examine effects of smoking on blood pressure stratified by body mass index (BMI) in the Mongolian population. METHODS: A total of 2589 Mongolians aged 20 years or more were recruited as study subjects. Demographic data, lifestyle factors, ...

Blood pressure is known to be higher in heavy drinkers than in nondrinkers. The aim of this study was to determine whether the alcohol-blood pressure relationship is modified by therapy for hypertension in the elderly. Men aged > or = 65 years (n = 1,396) with or without current history ...

AIM: To study the hemodynamics in the immediate post transplant period and compare patients with alcoholic vs viral cirrhosis. METHODS: Between 2000-2003, 38 patients were transplanted for alcoholic cirrhosis and 28 for postviral cirrhosis. Heart rate (HR), central venous pressure (CVP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP), ...

BACKGROUND: Hypertension has emerged as a major health risk among adults and the elderly in India. In spite of sharing similar physical and cultural environments, group level cultural variability and distinct genetic ancestry may result in differences in patterns of hypertension prevalence. AIM: The present study investigates the relationships between ...

Graphite oxide (GO) immersed in an excess of methanol and ethanol media is found to undergo a phase transformation at about 0.2-0.8 GPa, with an expansion of the unit cell volume by approximately 40%, due to pressure-induced insertion of solvent into interlayer space. The pressure at which the structural expansion ...

Energy drink consumption has been anecdotally linked to the development of adverse cardiovascular effects in consumers, although clinical trials to support this link are lacking. The effects of Red Bull energy drink on cardiovascular and neurologic functions were examined in college-aged students enrolled at Winona State University. In a double-blind ...

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the prevalence of masked hypertension when the same ambulatory device is used for both manual and ambulatory blood pressure measurements and to measure associations with lifestyle risk factors in a working population. METHODS: White-collar workers were recruited from three public organizations. Blood pressure was measured at the ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether body weight influences the associations of habitual alcohol drinking with blood pressure and serum lipids in women. METHODS: The subjects were 16,805 healthy women at ages of 35-54 years, and data were collected at work places of the subjects in Yamagata Prefecture in Japan from April ...