Body composition, metabolic and hormonal characteristics in unselected male hypertensives.

Body composition, glucose metabolism and indices of sympathetic nervous activity were studied in two different samples of unselected normotensive and hypertensive middle-aged men. The hypertensive subjects were more often obese and had more often an impaired glucose tolerance and a higher fasting insulin compared with the normotensives. The metabolic differences were not explained simply by the higher degree of obesity in the hypertensives, but seemed also to be related to an increased excretion of noradrenaline, ie to an increased overall sympathetic activity. The impaired glucose metabolism might be one of the factors explaining the variable prognosis in essential hypertension.