Some beneficial effects of angiotensin-I--converting enzyme (ACE, kininase II) inhibitor therapy are attributed to enhancing the activity of bradykinin on its B(2) receptor. Independent of inhibition of bradykinin hydrolysis, ACE inhibitors enhance the action of bradykinin on its B(2) receptor by inducing crosstalk between ACE and the receptor. We investigated whether inhibitors of another kini...

INTRODUCTION Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is thought to be related to the development of coronary disease. We were interested in knowing the degree of FMD in a large sample of coronary patients in relation to the therapy they were given in clinical practice. PATIENTS AND METHOD We studied 1,081 coronary patients (age 68 +/- 12 years, 73% male) in which FMD was evaluated in the brachial artery...

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) is a zinc-dependent peptidase responsible for converting angiotensin I into the vasoconstrictor angiotensin II. However, ACE is a relatively nonspecific peptidase that is capable of cleaving a wide range of substrates. Because of this, ACE and its peptide substrates and products affect many physiologic processes, including blood pressure control, hematopoiesi...

Angiotensin-I-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are an important class of antihypertensives whose action on the human organism is still not fully understood. Although it is known that ACE especially cleaves COOH-terminal dipeptides from active polypeptides, the whole range of substrates and products is still unknown. When analyzing the action of ACE inhibitors, effects of genetic variation on ...

S t u d y s e l e c t i o n English-language randomized controlled trials were selected if they compared the effectiveness of antihypertensive regimens containing ACE inhibitors (enalapril, captopril, benazepril, cilazapril, and ramipril) with that of antihypertensive regimens not containing ACE inhibitors (control group) in patients with nondiabetic renal disease and if they had ≥ 1 year of fo...

Several well-controlled trials in patients with heart failure have shown that the use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, in combination with a diuretic, causes a reduction in mortality and morbidity, which seems to be mainly due to a reduction in fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular events. Our aim was to determine whether 249 consecutive patients discharged from hospital with a pr...

OBJECTIVE To examine the role of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) and cyclic GMP in the regulation of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) in cultured human endothelial cells. METHODS Cultured endothelial cells from human umbilical veins (HUVEC) were treated with ANP (0.3-30 nM), 8-Br-cGMP (1-100 microM), Rp-8-Br-PET-cGMPS (1 microM), or the phosphodiesterase inhibitors, zaprinast (10-100 micr...

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) is known to catalyze the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II and degrades bradykinin and other vasoactive peptides. The fact that ACE participates in the degradation of bradykinin has led to the postulate that the beneficial renal and cardiovascular actions of ACE inhibitors can be attributed to augmenting and prolonging the effects of bradykinin. T...

The appearance of cough in association with angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors is thought to be related to bradykinin, and it has been speculated that the elicitation of adverse effects is genetically predetermined. Several polymorphisms of the human bradykinin B(2) receptor gene may be involved in ACE inhibitor-related cough. To investigate this possibility, we identified the -58 t...