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This study was designed to determine whether the levels of soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) were elevated in subjects with uncomplicated hypertension who presented with no other risk factors or evidence of athero-sclerosis. The effects of administration of an angiotensin type-1 antagonist (losartan) on the serum concentrations of these molecules were also examined. Twenty hypertensive (HT) subjects (12 men and 8 women, mean age 49.1 +/-7.2 years) without other risk factors or cardiovascular disease received placebo for 4 weeks. The patients were then treated with losartan (50 mg/day) for 24 weeks. After 4, 12, and 24 weeks of losartan treatment, sICAM-1 and TNF-alpha levels were measured. The same parameters were measured in 20 normotensive control subjects (C), matched for sex and age. HT had sICAM-1 and TNF-alpha basal values higher than C (respectively 351.7 +/-97.4 vs 201.6 +/-32.3 ng/mL, p<0.001 and 31.8 +/-2.4 vs 15.3 +/-2.2 pg/mL, p<0.001). There was a positive correlation between sICAM-1 and TNF-alpha levels, but no correlation in HT between the average diastolic and systolic blood pressure (clinic and ambulatory monitoring) and the sICAM-1 or TNF-alpha levels was observed. Losartan treatment caused a significant decrease of sICAM-1 levels at the end of the first month of treatment (300.2 +/-64.4 ng/mL, p<0.05), but the values reverted to the basal levels at the following time points. No variation of TNF-alpha levels during losartan treatment was observed. These results show that patients with uncomplicated mild essential hypertension presented with high plasma ICAM-1 and TNF-alpha concentrations. Although all the patients were responsive to the antihypertensive treatment with losartan, their plasma concentrations of TNF-alpha were not modified, and sICAM-1 concentrations decreased only for a short period of time. This suggests that in uncomplicated hypertension other factors besides the blood pressure modulate the endothelial inflammation.

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This paper focuses on the perception of young migrants who relocated to two Western metropolises, London and Vienna. In its majority, the target group consists of young graduates, speaking one or more foreign languages, and generally animated by a cosmopolitan spirit. The studied group consists of 11 persons interviewed in London and Vienna. Moreover, the paper is based on interviews conducted with a group of 13 leaders of a European project about migrants (Re-Turn Project). The studied groups consists of both genders in their 20s. With the analytical instruments of psychology, sociology and politology, their behaviour toward integration will be explained, as well as the matters of identity, the appropriation of cultural space and the imagined European community, still under construction. After a period of experience as migrants in a multicultural context, most of them have begun to revalue their own ethnic identity and their desire to belong to a group in which they can share a language, culture and traditions.