Urinary prostaglandin and prostaglandin metabolite excretion in patients with essential hypertension or hypertension with renal artery stenosis

Abstract

Background: Recent studies have reported elevated prostaglandin levels in patients with renal artery stenosis and hypertension. To investigate whether a distinction between essential hypertension and hypertension with renal artery stenosis is possible by measuring eicosanoid excretion, we studied the excretion of these compounds in patients with essential hypertension and in hypertensives with concomitant renal artery stenosis.Methods: The 24-h urinary excretion of metabolites of prostaglandin I2, prostaglandin E 2 and metabolites of thromboxane A 2 was sampled under standardised conditions, in 15 patients with essential hypertension and in 15 patients with unilateral renal artery stenosis with hypertension. Also clinical and biochemical characteristics of the subjects were analysed.Results: The patients with renal artery stenosis had significantly lower excretion of prostaglandin I 2 than did the essential hypertensive patients. However, the overlap in the values was large, thus not allowing a diagnostic differentiation according to urinary prostaglandin I z levels. The excretion of prostaglandin E 2 and of metabolites of thromboxane A 2 showed no significant differences among the groups.Conclusions: Measurement of urinary prostaglandin or prostaglandin metabolite excretion did not contribute to the non-invasive detection of the presence of a renal artery stenosis in the patients in this study.

Meloxicam, 15 mg/day, spares platelet function in healthy volunteers*1

“…Thromboxane B 2 concentrations in serum were determined in duplicate by radioimmunoassay 26 , 27 . As a measure of assay precision, intraassay and interassay coefficients of variations were 8.1% and 12.5%, respectively 28 . Samples were obtained in 10‐mL Vacutainer dry tubes and immediately incubated at 37°C to stimulate the thromboxane production in platelets during coagulation.…”