Key result
Chronic crowding stress accelerates blood pressure increase selectively in borderline hypertensive rats.
p-value: p=<0.01
Stress exposure in the postweaning period accelerates blood pressure elevation in female rats with a heterozygous genetic predisposition to hypertension.
Hypothesis-generating for stress-gene interactions in early hypertension; leaves open human translation and clinical relevance.
This study investigated the influence of chronic crowding stress on nitric oxide (NO) production, vascular function and oxidative status in young Wistar-Kyoto (WKY), borderline hypertensive (BHR) and spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) female rats. Five-week old rats were exposed to crowding for two weeks. Crowding elevated plasma corticosterone (P<0.05) and accelerated BP (P<0.01 versus basal) only in BHR. NO production and superoxide concentration were significantly higher in the aortas of control BHR and SHR versus WKY. Total acetylcholine (ACh)-induced relaxation in the femoral artery was reduced in control SHR versus WKY and BHR, and stress did not affect it significantly in any genotype. The attenuation of ACh-induced relaxation in SHR versus WKY was associated with reduction of its NO-independent component. Crowding elevated NO production in all strains investigated but superoxide concentration was increased only in WKY, which resulted in reduced NO-dependent relaxation in WKY. In crowded BHR and SHR, superoxide concentration was either unchanged or reduced, respectively, but NO-dependent relaxation was unchanged in both BHR and SHR versus their respective control group. This study points to genotype-related differences in stress vulnerability in young female rats. The most pronounced negative influence of stress was observed in BHR despite preserved endothelial function.
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Slezák et al. (2014) studied Genetic predisposition to hypertension. Chronic crowding stress vs. Standard housing conditions (>200 cm² per 100 g of animal weight) was evaluated on Blood pressure and plasma corticosterone changes (p=<0.01). Chronic crowding stress elevated plasma corticosterone and accelerated blood pressure increase (P<0.01 versus basal) selectively in borderline hypertensive rats, while increasing nitric oxide production in all strains.
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