Molecular Interactions of Arterial Hypertension in Its Target Organs

Abstract

Arterial hypertension (AH) is a major risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases. It is estimated that the disease affects between 10% and 20% of the adult population and is responsible for 5.8% of all deaths worldwide. Several pathophysiologic factors are crucial in AH, including inappropriate activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, oxidative stress and inflammation. The heart, kidney, brain, retina and arterial blood vessels are prime targets of hypertensive damage. Uncontrolled and untreated AH accelerates the damage to these organs and could cause their failure. Damage to these organs could also manifest as coronary heart disease, cognitive impairment, retinopathy or optic neuropathy. For better understanding, it is important to analyze molecular factors which take part in pathogenesis of AH and hypertension-related target organ damage. In our paper, we would like to focus on molecular interactions of AH in the heart, blood vessels, brain and kidneys. We focus on matrix metalloproteinases, the role of immune system, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system and oxidative stress in hypertensive induced organ damage.

Brain Asymmetry: Towards an Asymmetrical Neurovisceral Integration

“…Initially, it has been built on the basis of the connection between brain and heart that Claude Bernard already masterfully anticipated [3]: "Le coeur et le cerveau se trouvent dès lors dans une solidarité d'actions réciproques des plus intimes, qui se multiplient et se resserrent d'autant plus que l'organisme devient plus développé et plus délicat. Ces rapports peuvent être constants ou passagers, varier avec le sexe et avec l'âge" However, without doubt, that reflection goes further and constitutes an integral concept that encompasses the entire organism [4,5]. Furthermore, there are data that suggest that this global organization is carried out in an asymmetric way [6][7][8][9].…”

New Insights into Molecular Mechanisms of Chronic Kidney Disease

“…Oxidative stress is a process induced mostly by an excessive amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS) and is defined as disturbances in the pro-/antioxidant balance [ 9 ]. It leads to a disruption of oxidation–reduction (redox) signaling, molecular damage, and oxidation of biological molecules such as lipids, proteins, and DNA which could lead to covalent crosslinks, single- and double-strand breaks [ 9 ]. The kidneys are highly metabolic rate organs, which makes them vulnerable to damage caused by oxidative stress [ 10 ].…”

A cross-tissue transcriptome association study identifies key genes in essential hypertension

“…To find the key genes of essential hypertension, we integrated the GWAS data including 450,584 samples and the eQTL file from Genotype-Tissues Expression Project (GTEx) v8 (Consortium, 2020), which were analyzed using FUMA (Watanabe et al, 2017), UTMOST (Hu et al, 2019), and FUSION (Gusev et al, 2016) software respectively, and we finally validated the results using SMR (Zhu et al, 2016). The main target organs of hypertension are the heart, kidneys, brain, retina, and arteries, and the activation of the renin-angiotensinaldosterone system, oxidative stress, and inflammation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of hypertension (Kucmierz et al, 2021). Therefore, hypertension may hurt various systems within the body.…”