Mental stress and hypertension, an evolutionary framework: some historical perspectives of the 1960 World Health Organization Prague Hypertension Meeting.

Emotional stress acutely and repetitively causing blood pressure increase or aggravating existing hypertension is usually not reflected by norepinephrine and epinephrine increase but by a sudden rise of dopamine, the third "defensive" catecholamine coping with the damaging neuropsychological and cardiovascular actions of the first two. This double-edged sympathetic response to emotional stress evolves during human lifespan and long-term evolution of hypertension. In the course of philogenesis it carries a potential mismatch between the normal physiology of the human dopaminergic system and current environmental (emotional particularly) conditions in industrialized countries.

Peripheral dopamine in hypertension and associated conditions.

The purpose of this study is to review the role of dopamine in hypertension and associated conditions. The analysis of literature indicates that present knowledge is mostly based on poor markers and indirect evidence of dopaminergic activity and only few molecular biological data. Alternative markers such as plasma dopamine sulfate emerge as a possible substitute for the low plasma free dopamine detectability, one of the main obstacles in understanding the relationship between circulating dopamine and its receptor actions in hypertension.

Idiopathic hypovolemia: a self-perpetuating autonomic dysfunction?

Unexplained episodic hypertension, hypotension, or orthostatic intolerance, tachycardia, anxiety, and flushing in 21 patients were investigated for the possibility of hypovolemia by blood volume and individual plasma catecholamines (including autocrine paracrine-born dopamine), determinations baseline, in response to upright posture and catecholamines only during the episodic blood pressure swings. Blood volume was determined by Cr51 fixed to patients' hemoglobin, free norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine with dopamine sulfate following sulfatase hydrolysis, radioenzymatically. The recumbent mean 27.