Impaired sodium excretion after stress contributes to hypertension...( adrenal gland that also gets the kidney...),Health

Dr. Harshfield has long wondered whether reactivity alone was how behavioral factors contribute to hypertension. As a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University Medical Center in New York in the 1980s, he worked on a program project grant from the National Institutes of Health examining behavioral factors contributing to blood pressure regulation variation.

These studies in animal models found that even though blood pressures increased significantly in response to stress, that alone did not produce cardiovascular damage, such as thickening of the muscle wall in the pumping chamber of the heart. But his more recent work, published in the current issue of the journal Hypertension, documents structural changes in the left ventricles of blacks who retain sodium during stress.

Hypertension is not a disease in and of itself; its a symptom of some other underlying disorder, said Dr. Harshfield, an expert in the kidneys role in blood pressure regulation. Hypertension can result from multiple impaired systems but they all lead to impaired renal function. So, no matter what the etiology, the underlying characteristic of hypertension is that it requires a higher level of blood pressure to maintain a sodium balance.

He hopes that by better defining the causes of elevated blood pressure, patients can get more targeted, effective treatments so that resulting damage, such as kidney failure and heart disease, can be avoided.

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Contact: Toni Baker
tbaker@mail.mcg.edu
706-721-4421
Medical College of Georgia
16-May-2002