Hypertension II: Hypertension and Vascular Control

oxygen radicals and hypertension

Geert,
This is a very nice study. For the Dahl-S rats, did you find any noticeable differences in superoxide anion production among different branch orders of arterioles? I am especially interested in this because of our earlier findings that increased vascular tone in the spinotrapezius muscle of hypertensive Dahl-S is limited to only the arcade (proximal) arterioles. Have you tried to correlate the level of resting tone with the level of superoxide in individual arterioles?

Also, what do you think might be the significance of increased superoxide production in the venules of SHR and hypertensive Dahl-S? Could this have an effect on permeability (via reducing basal NO activity)?

Matt Boegehold

Tue Dec 8