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Growth Hormones Trigger Hypertrophic Remodeling in Acromegalic Patients: Presented at HBPR

By Peggy Peck

WASHINGTON, DC -- October 3, 2003 -- Results of a small comparative study suggest that humoral growth factors present in acromegalic patients trigger hypertrophic remodeling that correlates with significant increases in media thickness and changes in arterial pressure.

Damiano Rizzoni, MD, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy, presented the findings here September 25^th at the American Heart Association's 57^th High Blood Pressure Research Conference.

He said that earlier studies suggested that renovascular hypertension stimulated hypertrophic remodeling as did type 2 diabetes. "Thus we expected that growth hormones would also stimulate in vivo proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells," he said.

The study recruited six men and six women with essential hypertension (EH), six men and six women who were normotensive (NP), and five men and four women with acromegaly (AP).

Patients underwent a biopsy of the subcutaneous fat so that small resistance arteries could be dissected and examined by micromyograph. The researchers calculated the normalised internal diameter (ID), media thickness (MT), media/lumen ratio (M/L), media cross-sectional area (MCSA) and indices of remodeling (RI) and growth (GI). Mean arterial pressures were also compared.

Media thickness averaged 23.6 in the patients with acromegaly compared with 17.8 in the normotensive group, which was highly significant (P<0.001) and 20.6 in essential hypertensives, which was significant (P<0.05). Systolic arterial pressure averaged 138 and diastolic averaged 82 in the acromegalic patients compared to 161 SAP and 98 DAP in essential hypertensives, which was significant (P<0.0001).

M/L was not significantly different between essential hypertensives and those with acromegaly, but it was significantly increased, in both cases, compared with normotensives.

Moreover, MCSA was significantly greater in the acromegaly group compared to the other two groups. The calculation of remodeling and growth index suggests the presence of eutrophic remodeling in essential hypertensives (growth index 0%) and of hypertrophic remodeling in acromegalic patients (growth index 39%).


[Study title: Acromegalic Patients Show the Presence of Hypertrophic Remodeling of Subcutaneous Small Resistance Arteries. Abstract P174]

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