Dr. Michael H. Alderman Takes the Helm as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Hypertension

It is a pleasure for me to announce that Dr. Michael Alderman will replace me as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Hypertension effective January 1, 2007. Dr. Alderman is a world-renowned epidemiologist who is unique among his peers because he has been especially interested in asking pathophysiologic questions in performing his population trials. This penchant led him to demonstrate, in a classic eight-year trial of 1717 hypertensive worksite employees,1 that the height of the entry ambulatory plasma renin level was directly related to the subsequent occurrence of a myocardial infarction (MI). At the same time, he found that no MI’s occurred in the 251 patients who had low entry plasma renin levels. This led Alderman to do a confirming follow up study showing that dietary salt-depleted hypertensives with consequent higher renin values and lower urinary sodium values had proportionally higher heart attack rates than did those who ate more salt, and therefore had progressively lower renin values.2 Dr. Alderman’s research rightly questions the popular wisdom of unselectively advising salt avoidance for all hypertensives, and for all normotensive people, - a popular public health strategy which will surely chronically raise all of their plasma renin values and may have other unintended adverse consequences. Furthermore, this research has clearly reaffirmed the existence of only two mechanistically different types of long-term hypertension, each one of which is caused and sustained by either a body sodium (plasma and ECF fluid-volume) excess or instead by a plasma renin-angiotensin excess.3–5 This construction is supported by evidence that the hypertensive states caused by a body salt excess or a plasma renin excess are each quite selectively correctable respectively by giving a natriuretic drug or instead an antirenin antihypertensive drug.6 Dr. Alderman has been serving at the Journal as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the past eighteen months during which time he helped the Journal sustain its steady upward growth curve, notwithstanding our complete withdrawal7 from our 17-year affiliation arrangement with the American Society of Hypertension. Thus, our new subscription numbers have continued their steady growth as do the number of first rate original papers submitted to AJH from scientists the world over. Obviously, the Journal is on track to become bigger and better as we go forward under Alderman’s leadership. As I pass the baton to Dr. Alderman I would also like to thank those who worked with me over the past 18 years to make the Journal what it is today. The Journal would not exist without Joan Banes, our Founding Managing Editor, a member of our Board of Directors, and our AJH Treasurer since 1986. While Joan is also a scientist, I especially cherished her skills at the American Society of Hypertension and at the AJH in managing and organizing all personnel and all of our business and academic meetings. Joan retired from ASH several years ago and plans to retire from the AJH this year. She will be sorely missed. Michael Weber and Norman Kaplan were fellow founding members of ASH who served the Journal as valuable advisors, reviewers and contributors over the years. Dr. Larry Krakoff served as my Executive Editor for a number of years, overlapping with the late Dr. Larry Resnick, my friend and a passionate, talented scientist and a great editor who could make authors love him, even in the face of his severe, but always constructive and kind criticisms. Dr. Resnick’s dedication to his daily Journal work, even during his final illness, was an inspiration to all of us. Right now, we are Indeed fortunate in having two excellent Executive Editors. Dr. Jon Blumenfeld, a frequent co-author with me in the renin world and my longtime friend, is an outstanding practicing nephrologist whose clinical and scientific acumen has been a major force for excellence at the Journal since 1988. Since last year Jon has shared his heavy workload with Dr. Charles Stier Jr. our new basic science Executive Editor. Charlie has published important research on the role of aldosterone in experimental hypertensions. Thus, we now have an editorial dream team in place and poised to sustain and enrich the further growth and development of the Journal. As you can see, I leave the journal in very good hands. From my clinical and scientific perspectives, I will now look forward to the day when drug selections for individual hypertensive patients are no longer driven by pharmaceutical industry based marketing strategies and are no longer based on demographics that have no known physiological basis, but instead are based on accurate and readily measurable biochemical parameters, such as plasma renin.