High blood pressure linked to baroreflex in rats
Animal model observation may reveal new cause of hypertension

Date:
October 5, 2020
Source:
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan
Summary:
Researchers describe a newly observed phenomenon in the way blood
pressure is maintained in certain rats.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
High blood pressure: some people take medication to control it while
others commit to low salt diets, exercise or yoga to reduce stress. Blood pressure is a primary vital sign, yet, remarkably, just how the body
maintains it is still a mystery.


========================================================================== "We've been studying high blood pressure for 100 years and we still have
the same ideas," says Daniel Beard, Ph.D., the Carl J. Wiggers Collegiate Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology. In a new paper in JCI Insight,
Beard, Feng Gu, Ph.D., from the department of molecular and integrative physiology, and their team describe a newly observed phenomenon in the
way blood pressure is maintained in certain rats.

Their discovery comes on the heels of an inquiry into the linkage
between stiffened arteries and high blood pressure, known clinically
as hypertension.

"What happens when you are hypertensive is your arteries get stiffer. But
this is thought to be an effect, not a cause," explains Beard. Stiff
arteries have a reduced ability to stretch in response to increased
pressure. This stretching is controlled by the baroreflex, an automatic neurological response to changes in tension.

"The goal of the reflex is to keep blood pressure steady," says Beard. "If pressure starts dropping, heart rate and cardiac activity go up and
if it gets too high, they go down." The team's hypothesis was that
the stiffening in the arteries causes a neural defect, decreasing the
ability of the baroreflex to detect arterial stretching and reduce
pressure accordingly.

While measuring this effect in rats, they observed that the baroreflex
appeared to switch on and off for extended periods of time, up to 5-10
minutes at a time. Spontaneously hypertensive rats -- ones who were
genetically prone to high blood pressure -- appeared to have more time
with the reflex turned off.

In fact, Beard's team was able to predict which rats would be hypertensive
by the pattern of this baroreflex behavior.

Measuring the dynamic response to blood pressure changes in a human
involves tests like a tilt table test, during which a person is
strapped to a table that changes positions to measure the cardiovascular response. However, for this study, the team was able to outfit rats with sensors to measure the baroreflex and blood pressure as they went about
normal activities. Doing so allowed observation of the on/off phenomenon
for the first time.

"First we had to convince ourselves this was real," says Beard. To do
so, they compared their animals to rats of a different lineage, ones
who developed high blood pressure in response to diet, and saw the same
on/off phenomenon.

Surprisingly, however, there was no link to blood pressure in these
rats. Says Beard, "the baroreflex is contributing to making some animals hypertensive but not others. It may be playing other roles we don't understand." The team's next goal is to figure out why the baroreflex
turns on and off in rats and whether or not the phenomenon exists in
people. If so, "it could give us clues about what therapies people may
or may not respond to," Beard says.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Michigan_Medicine_-_University_of_Michigan. Original written by Kelly
Malcom. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Feng Gu, E. Benjamin Randall, Steven Whitesall, Kimber
Converso-Baran,
Brian E. Carlson, Gregory D. Fink, Daniel E. Michele, Daniel
A. Beard.

Potential role of intermittent functioning of baroreflexes in the
etiology of hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats. JCI
Insight, 2020; 5 (19) DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.139789 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005101546.htm

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