Antioxidant and antihypertensive activity of extract from Thymus serpyllum L. in experimental hypertension.

The low incidence of cardiovascular disease in Mediterranean countries leads to an increased interest of the scientific community for the Mediterranean diet. Our aim was to evaluate total phenol and flavonoid contents, antioxidant capacity, free radical scavenging activity and potential antihypertensive effect of aqueous extract obtained from Thymus serpyllum L. (wild thyme, TE), an aromatic herb from the Lamiaceae family (highly present in Mediterranean diet), in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and in normotensive Wistar rats.

[Slowing the progression of chronic renal insufficiency with captopril in rats with spontaneous arterial hypertension and adriamycin nephropathy].

Introduction: The role of hypertension in chronic renal failure (CRF) progression was described in 1914 by Volhard and Fahr [1], in 1940 by Rite and colleagues [2] and subsequently many studies described the effects of various antihypertensive drugs on regulation of blood pressure and CRF progression. The recent experimental and clinical studies especially emphasized the role of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors in the regulation of hypertension and slowing down of CRF progression, but there are still issues for discussion and disagreement [2-14]. The aim of this study was to analyse the effects of captopril on clinical, biochemical and morphological changes in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) with adriamycin (ADR) nephropathy.

Streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus lowers blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rat.

There are conflicting reports showing that alloxan or streptozotocin-induced diabetes in rat increases, decreases or does not alter blood pressure. Since hypertension influences organ-specific diabetic complications, this study was designed to examine the effects of streptozotocin-induced diabetes on blood pressure (BP), hemodynamics and heart weight in spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) and normotensive Wistar (NWR) rats. In order to control the influence of weight loss on BP affected by diabetes, we have examined the effect of weight loss without diabetes on BP, hemodynamics and heart weight in SHR.