BACKGROUND There is continuing variation in diagnosis and estimated prevalence of primary hyperaldosteronism. The higher estimates encourage search for adrenal adenomas in patients with elevated ratios of plasma aldosterone to renin. However, it is more likely that patients with normal plasma K+ and aldosterone belong to the polygenic spectrum of low-renin hypertension rather than have the same...

Experience with the DOCA test (measurement of urinary excretion of aldosterone before and after 3 days of administration of 10 mg deoxycorticosterone acetate [DOCA] intramuscularly every 12 hours while on high sodium intake) is presented in 129 hypertensive patients to define its usefulness in discriminating between autonomous and nonautonomous production of aldosterone. All patients who did no...

Editorial Recent linkage studies in humans with essential hypertension and in animal models of spontaneous hypertension have suggested that genetically determined variation in the activity of the renin-angiotensin system may contribute to inherited variations in blood pressure (1, 2). While it is remarkable that most of the positive linkage studies of hypertension to date have implicated chromo...

1. The effect of haemodialysis on blood pressure was assessed in forty-six patients with end-stage kidney disease, in relation to measurements of plasma renin concentration (PRC), plasma renin substrate (PRS) and blood volume. Parallel measurements of PRC and blood volume were carried out before and during the period of regular dialysis treatment. PRS was measured during this period only. 2. Bo...

Maternal low protein diet programs offspring to develop hypertension as adults. Transient exposure to angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin II receptor blockers can result in improvement in hypertension. Male rats whose mothers received a low protein diet during the last half of pregnancy were given either vehicle, continuous enalapril (CE) in their drinking water or were give...

1. In eight normal subjects, ten patients with labile hypertension, six with advanced essential hypertension and six with renovascular hypertension, plasma renin concentration, cardiac output, mean arterial pressure, clearances of creatinine and p-aminohippurate (PAH), and sodium excretion were measured before and after 30 min of 45" upright tilting. Changes in plasma adrenaline and noradrenali...

Preexisting chronic hypertension complicates up to 5% of pregnancies and is associated with an increased risk of low-birth-weight babies. Studies suggest that an adverse intrauterine environment leading to low birth weight is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including hypertension, in the adult. In this study, the blood pressure of offspring from mothers with hypertension ...

Two studies of the responses to clonidine as the sole antihypertensive drug in the treatment of mild-to-moderate hypertension are reported. In the first, 11 patients with mild hypertension were treated with 0.1 mg clonidine twice daily for eight weeks. Those patients with "low renin" hypertension (n = 7) were noted to show an increase in plasma renin activity; the patients with "normal renin" h...