Dietary risk factors of stroke and hypertension in Japan -- Part 1: Methodological assessment of urinalysis for dietary salt and protein intakes.

In our attempt to design a method which would be more reliable than dietary survey interviews when estimating salt and protein intakes in a population survey, a urinalysis-related study was done on volunteers. Urinary sodium (Na), urea nitrogen (UN) and inorganic sulfate (SO4), all indices of dietary salt, protein and sulfoamino acids, respectively, were confirmed to reflect the nutritional condition. Interaction between salt and protein was not observed at least at the dietary levels used in the present study (for salt, 0.

Symptomatological classification in the development of stroke in stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats.

The developmental course of cerebrovascular diseases was examined by comparative neurological and pathological studies in stroke-prone SHR (SHRSP) which died spontaneously or were sacrificed. Behavioral status during their life span could be simply divided into 4 patterns, i.e.

Mechanisms of structural vascular changes in genetic hypertension: analyses on cultured vascular smooth muscle cells from spontaneously hypertensive rats.

1. The basic mechanism underlying the structural vascular changes occurring in hypertension was studied in cultured aortic smooth muscle cells (SMC) obtained by an explant method from spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and stroke-prone SHR (SHRSP) and compared with that in normotensive Wistar--Kyoto (WKY) rats. 2.

Permeability of intracranial extracerebral vessels in stroke-prone SHR.

Permeability of intracranial extracerebral arteries of stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSP) was studied using labeling techniques (ferritin and horseradish peroxidase), at the cellular level. In the arterial endothelial cells, the tracer molecules were slowly but constantly transported by the plasmalemmal vesicles to the subendothelial space. This endothelial transportation of the tracers into these cerebral arteries did not seem to be significantly influenced by aging, increased blood pressure, hyperlipidemia or the existence of cerebral bleeding and infarction.

[Effect of Bromovincamine on noradrenaline and 5-hydroxytryptamine contents, and glucose metabolism in rat brain: analysis using spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) (author's transl)].

Effects of Bromovincamine (BV) on cerebral noradrenaline (NA) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) contents, and glucose metabolism in the brain were studied using stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive (SHR-SP), stroke-resistant spontaneously hypertensive (SHR), age-matched normotensive Wistar Kyoto (WKR) and Wistar rats. In the SHR-SP which have a low level of NA in the hypothalamus, a continuous administration of BV for 1 week induced a normalization of the hypothalamic NA content. Under the same experimental conditions, a tendency toward normalization of hypothalamic NA was also observed in SHR.

Cytoplasmic pH mediates pH taxis and weak-acid repellent taxis of bacteria.

Bacteria migrate away from an acid pH and from a number of chemicals, including organic acids such as acetate; the basis for detection of these environmental cues has not been demonstrated. Membrane-permeant weak acids caused prolonged tumbling when added to Salmonella sp. or Escherichia coli cells at pH 5.

Genetic markers in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Establishment of various models for hypertensive diseases such as spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and stroke-prone SHR (SHRSP) clarified the importance of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of these diseases and further accelerated studies on their genetic mechanisms. Although various biochemical abnormalities have been detected and can be used as biochemical markers in these models, they have not been always closely related to blood pressure in F2 generation obtained by cross breeding between SHR and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats. Recent studies indicate that biomembrane abnormalities detected in erythrocytes and other membranes of SHR and SHRSP may not only be biochemical markers but also related to the pathogenesis of hypertensive diseases.

Epidemiological analysis on the mechanism of cigarette smoking as a risk factor in cardiovascular diseases.

To clarify the mechanism involved in the contribution of cigarette smoking to increased mortality in patients of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), blood pressure (BP), serum cholesterol (Chl), triglycerides (TG), obesity index (OI), hematocrit (Ht), hemoglobin (Hb) etc, were examined in male smokers and non-smokers among 2500 inhabitants of a farming village in Japan. Smokers were classified by age and by the number (n) of cigarettes smoked per day into mild smokers (1 smaller than or equal to n < 20), moderate smokers (20 smaller than or equal to n < 30) and heavy smokers (n larger than or equal to 30). Ht was increased with the number of cigarettes smoked and was significantly higher in heavy smokers than in non-smokers, in most all the age groups.

Cardiac hypertrophy in early hypertension.

Studies of cardiac hypertrophy in spontaneously hypertensive rats have indicated that left ventricular hypertrophy occurred even in the prehypertensive stage. These findings suggested that other factors besides blood pressure levels, and including possibly a genetic predisposition to myocardial hypertrophy, could play a role in structural cardiovascular alterations in spontaneously hypertensive rats. More recent studies have confirmed these anatomic results; left ventricular hypertrophy was vectorcardiographically detected even in the prehypertensive stage in voth young stroke-prone rats and stroke-resistant spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Chemotaxis of Salmonella typhimurium toward citrate.

Salmonella, but not Escherichia coli, was attracted to citrate, a distinction that is understandable in view of the inability of E. coli to transport tricarboxylic acids. The Salmonella response to citrate and to two previously described attractants, aspartate and malate, was mutually noncompetitive.