Recent reports indicate that cyclooxygenase inhibitors such as aspirin may facilitate the release of interleukin-2 from thymic T cells. We have previously reported that aspirin has antihypertensive effects in the standard animal model of essential hypertension, the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR). Because the SHR has been reported to be deficient in T cells, it was of interest to determine...

Heart failure is a complex neurohumoral and inflammatory syndrome. Studies have shown that proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-1, interleukin-2, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor) are involved in cardiac depression and in the complex syndrome of heart failure. Understanding the involvement of these cytokines may enable us to reverse cardiac depression and heart failure with the use of...