Our understanding of systemic hypertension and its vascular complications has been expanding steadily in the past two decades. This progress has refined methods for the measurement of hypertensive disease complications and allowed an inquiry into the clinical factors that may accelerate them. The heart is a prime target for hypertensive damage, suffering accelerated coronary atherosclerosis, [...]
Role of Sympathetic Nervous and Renin Angiotensin Systems Both the renin-angiotensin systemand the sympathetic nervous system (sympathetic nervous system) are frequently overactive in patients with hypertension. Whereas the activation of the renin-angiotensin system can be relatively easily assessed by relating plasma renin to urinary sodium levels, there are no reliable routine measurements to assess the [...]
The authoritative meta-analysis of large antihypertensive trials by Collins et al. shows that antihypertensive therapy is fully capable of reducing strokes but that the effect on reduction of coronary events is less than anticipated. The failure to reduce coronary outcomes is particularly clear in younger patients. To a student of physiology, such an outcome is [...]
