Sympathetic nerve hyperactivity and its effect in postmenopausal women.

Objectives: Hypertension and its subsequent cardiovascular complications have been associated with sympathetic neural activation, and their prevalence in women increases after the menopause. However, there have been no data on the level of sympathetic activation and its relationship to vascular blood flow following the menopause. Therefore, we planned to find out whether the behavior of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and calf blood flow (CBF) in women with and without essential hypertension (EHT) is changed following the menopause.