Calcium metabolism and structure in the peripheral vasculature: implications for hypertension.

This paper reviews in vitro investigations of resistance vessels taken from individuals with essential hypertension and from spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). Unlike mesenteric resistance vessels from SHRs, the calcium sensitivity of subcutaneous resistance vessels from essential hypertensive patients is not increased, but decreased. However, like the resistance vessels from SHRs, the structure of the resistance vessels from the essential hypertensive patients (expressed in terms of their media thicknesses) was increased. In studies with SHRs, the increased media are found to be associated with cellular hyperplasia. If this also is true for the resistance vasculature of patients with essential hypertension, this may explain findings that antihypertensive treatment reduces blood pressure more readily than vascular structure. These findings could also be relevant as regards the rather limited effect of such treatment on hypertension-related diseases such as infarction.