Journal of Hypertension: Open Access

Background: Systemic arterial hypertension represents the mayor risk factor for several cardiovascular diseases. In a large number of patients it affects the left ventricle by a compensating hypertrophy and posteriorly when this mechanism is insufficient, it leads to heart failure and therefore the patient requires regular echocardiographic monitoring. Subclinical dysfunction of the left ventricle exists even in asymptomatic hypertensive patients with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction.
Objectives: The main aim of our study was focused in the assessment of left ventricular mechanical deformation in 20 patients with systemic arterial hypertension and 21 healthy controls.
Results: A total of 41 subjects were studied, 22 women and 19 men. The hypertensive group consisted of 20 patients and the healthy control group of 21 subjects. The echocardiographic findings that had significative differences between hypertensive patients and healthy controls were left ventricle mass index, E/A ratio, E/e´ ratio and systolic pulmonary arterial pressure. In patients with hypertension, the radial deformation had a significative reduction, p=0.002, but the longitudinal deformation was statistically decreased (p=0.008), only in the subgroup of hypertensive patients with left ventricular hypertrophy.
Conclusion: The patients with systemic hypertension require a close follow-up in order to identify the most accurate echocardiographic parameter for diagnosis of subclinical dysfunction. In our study, the global radial deformation was significatively diminished in the hypertensive patients and the global longitudinal deformation was decreased only in the subgroup of hypertensive patients with left ventricular hypertrophy.

Objective: We analyzed the expression of interleukin-(IL)-17 and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β in the spleens of rats suffering from liver cirrhosis and hypersplenism, and investigated the cause of peripheral cytopenias.
Methods: Fifty-five male Sprague–Dawley rats were divided randomly into two groups. The control group (n=15) was gavaged with physiologic (0.9%) saline. The experimental group (n=40) was gavaged with 40% CCL4/peanut oil solution at 0.3 mL/100 g twice a week for 8 weeks, and a 15% alcohol solution was given as drinking water, to establish a model of liver cirrhosis and hypersplenism. After confirmation of liver cirrhosis and hypersplenism, spleen tissue was collected to determine expression of IL-17 and TGF-β by Immuno Histo Chemical (IHC), western blotting, and real-time fluorescence-based quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Results: IHC staining revealed positive expression of IL-17 and TGF-β in the experimental group to be 36.67% and 73.33% respectively, which was significantly higher than that in the control group (6.67% and 13.33%, respectively; χ2=4.60, P<0.05; χ2=14.46, P<0.01). Western blotting revealed the relative expression of IL-17 and TGF-β in the experimental group (1.09 ± 0.39, 1.51 ± 0.22) to be significantly higher than that in the control group (0.53 ± 0.25, 0.63 ± 0.17) (t= -3.227, P<0.01; t= -9.264, P<0.01). Real-time fluorescence-based qPCR showed relative expression of IL-17 and TGF-β mRNA in the experimental group to be 2.81 ± 0.70 and 2.91 ± 0.63, respectively, which was significantly higher than that in the control group (1.06 ± 0.21 and 0.99 ± 0.052, respectively) (t= -5.96, P<0.01; t= -7.35, P<0.01). Pearson correlation analyses showed the relative mRNA expression of IL-17 to be positively correlated with that of TGF-β (R=0.520, P<0.01).
Conclusion: Expression of IL-17 and TGF-β was increased significantly and positively correlated in the spleens of rats suffering from liver cirrhosis and hypersplenism, which may have caused peripheral cytopenias.

Objective: To determine the types of presentation of blood pressure figures in elderly hypertensive patients, in the Health, Welfare and Aging survey (SABE) in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study. Secondary analysis of the group of elderly participants in the multicenter SABE study, who underwent blood pressure measurements. Results: A total of 1018 women and 805 men were included, with an average age of 71 ± 8.2 years. The types of arterial hypertension (HA) present were: isolated systolic hypertension (35.7%), isolated diastolic hypertension (32%), and systolic-diastolic hypertension (32.3%). There was no relationship in the distribution of HA with height above sea level. In older adults with diabetes, mean arterial pressure (PAM) was higher. Discussion: We found that all three types of hypertension maintain balanced percentages of almost one third each, lack of early detection of isolated diastolic hypertension.