The influence of isotonic exercise on cardiac hypertrophy in arterial hypertension: impact on cardiac function and on the capacity for aerobic work.

Intense physical training through isotonic exercises has controversial effects in individuals with moderate to severe hypertension. In this study, normotensive Wistar rats and rats with renovascular hypertension (Goldblatt II) were subjected to intense physical exercise involving two 50-min swimming sessions per day for a period of 12 weeks. At the end of the study, we evaluated the effect of training on arterial pressure, the capacity for aerobic work and cardiac function. Our results demonstrate that intense physical training has no effect on the arterial blood pressure of normotensive rats or of animals with moderate renovascular hypertension. Hypertensive animals with cardiac hypertrophy require a greater period of training in order to attain the same capacity for aerobic work as normotensive rats. This difference may result from an inability of the former animals to increase cardiac compliance, thereby impeding more extensive usage of the Frank-Starling mechanism to subsequently increase the systolic cardiac performance. Cardiac hypertrophy induced by exercise did not summate with that induced by arterial hypertension. Physical exercise normalized the end-diastolic left ventricular pressure in hypertensive animals without any corresponding increase in the compliance of the chamber. The first derivative of left ventricular pulse pressure (+/- dP/dt) was greater in the hypertensive trained group than in the hypertensive sedentary rats. These observations suggest that a systolic dysfunction of the left ventricle involving an elevated residual volume secondary to arterial hypertension may be corrected by physical exercise such as swimming.