Reduced urinary excretion of prostaglandin E in essential hypertension.

To ascertain whether renal prostaglandin (PG) E synthesis is decreased in patients with essential hypertension (EH), urinary PGE excretion (UPGEV) was measured in 47 normal females and 62 female patients with EH. In order to avoid contaminations of urine by seminal fluids, only female subjects were studied. UPGEV was also measured in female patients with renovascular hypertension (RVH) as well as primary aldosteronism (PA) or idiopathic hyperaldosteronism (IHA). As a whole, UPGEV was lower in patients with EH (226.9 +/- 13.7 ng/day) than that in normal females (317.3 +/- 22.1 ng/day, p less than 0.001). Younger patients (15 to 39 years) had significantly lower UPGEV than normal females of corresponding ages. However, there was no significant difference in UPGEV between older patients (over 40 years) with EH and normal females of the same age range. There were no significant differences in UPGEV among patients with low renin EH, normal renin EH, RVH, PA and IHA. We reconfirmed the decrease in UPGEV in patients with EH as compared with normal controls by studying female subjects. Further, it is suggested that renal PGE synthesis is not influenced by the renin-angiotensin system in these hypertensive states.