Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Critical Review Of Medication Adherence In Hypertension: Barriers And Facilitators Clinicians Should Consider, Seyed Mehrdad Hamrahian, Omar H. Maarouf, Tibor Fülöp

Department of Medicine Faculty Papers

Hypertension is a global public health problem, and its prevalence is increasing worldwide. Impacting all human societies and socioeconomic strata, it remains the major modifiable risk factor for global burden of cardiovascular disease all-cause mortality and the leading cause of loss of disability-adjusted life years. Despite increased awareness, the rate of blood pressure control remains unsatisfactory, particularly in low-to middle-income countries. Apparent treatment-resistant hypertension is associated with worse adverse health outcomes. It includes both true resistant and pseudo-resistant hypertension, which requires out-of-office blood pressure monitoring to exclude white-coat effect and confirmation of adherence to the agreed recommended antihypertensive therapy. The …

A Genome-Wide Methylation Study On Essential Hypertension In Young African American Males., Xiaoling Wang, Bonita Falkner, Haidong Zhu, Huidong Shi, Shaoyong Su, Xiaojing Xu, Ashok Kumar Sharma, Yanbin Dong, Frank Treiber, Bernard Gutin, Gregory Harshfield, Harold Snieder

Department of Medicine Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVE: There is emerging evidence from animal studies suggesting a key role for methylation in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension. However, to date, very few studies have investigated the role of methylation in the development of human hypertension, and none has taken a genome-wide approach. Based on the recent studies that highlight the involvement of inflammation in the development of hypertension, we hypothesize that changes in DNA methylation of leukocytes are involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension.

METHOD & RESULTS: We conducted a genome-wide methylation analysis on 8 hypertensive cases and 8 normotensive age-matched controls aged 14-23 years and performed …

Chronic Diseases: The Emerging Pandemic., Andre Terzic, Scott A. Waldman

Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Faculty Papers

According to the 2011 World Health Organization Global Status Report, of the 57 million annual global deaths – a staggering 36 million or over 63% are due to chronic diseases.¹ Four noncommunicable diseases - namely cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases - emerge as the leading cause of mortality in the world, accounting respectively for 17, 7.6, 4.2, and 1.3 million deaths based on the latest available global epidemiology data. By 2020, global deaths due to chronic diseases are projected to worsen by at least 15 to 20%. It is estimated that the four major noncommunicable diseases will …

Leg Ulcers In Sickle Cell Disease., Caterina P Minniti, James Eckman, Paola Sebastiani, Martin H Steinberg, Samir K. Ballas

Department of Medicine Faculty Papers

Sickle cell disease is a single amino acid molecular disorder of hemoglobin leading to its pathological polymerization, red cell rigidity that causes poor microvascular blood flow, with consequent tissue ischemia and infarction. The manifestations of this disease are protean.Among them, leg ulcers represent a particularly disabling and chronic complication, often associated with a more severe clinical course.Despite the fact that this complication has been recognized since the early times of SCD, there has been little improvement in the efficacy of its management and clinical outcome over the past 100 years. Recently, vasculopathic abnormalities involving abnormal vascular tone and activated, adhesive …

Y27632, A Rho-Activated Kinase Inhibitor, Normalizes Dysregulation In Alpha1-Adrenergic Receptor-Induced Contraction Of Lyon Hypertensive Rat Artery Smooth Muscle., Maria Regina Freitas, Masumi Eto, Jason A Kirkbride, Christa Schott, Jean Sassard, Jean-Claude Stoclet

Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics Faculty Papers

RhoA-activated kinase (ROK) is involved in the disorders of smooth muscle contraction found in hypertension model animals and patients. We examined whether the alpha1-adrenergic receptor agonist-induced ROK signal is perturbed in resistance small mesentery artery (SMA) of Lyon genetically hypertensive (LH) rats, using a ROK antagonist, Y27632. Smooth muscle strips of SMA and aorta were isolated from LH and Lyon normotensive (LN) rats. After Ca(2+)-depletion and pre-treatment with phenylephrine (PE), smooth muscle contraction was induced by serial additions of CaCl(2). In LH SMA Ca(2+) permeated cells to a lesser extent as compared with LN SMA, while CaCl(2)-induced contraction of LH …