Programming of cardiovascular phenotype by pharmacological intervention in early developmental stages: prevention of hypertension

Cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension, represent serious medical and social problem because they affect many people in industrialized countries in the world and, unfortunately, their incidence has not decreasing tendency. Human essential hypertension is a chronic, slowly developing disease, which is a consequence of abnormalities in the development of cardiovascular system and its regulation, which are subsequently reflected in pathological rise of blood pressure. In general, blood pressure increases slowly and gradually and this may last several years. Myocardial hypertrophy and structural alterations of the vessel system frequently occur. As hypertension is already established, then complete normalization of blood pressure is difficult to obtain. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on its prevention, this means, to intervene before blood pressure elevation in individuals with significant genetic predisposition to this disease. Moreover, it is well known that cardiovascular system of the young organism is very sensitive to various environmental influences, and one can expect that it may also be more susceptible to vasoactive substances in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Hypertension and its pharmacological treatment should therefore be studied with regard to the maturity of an individual. In accordance with the hypothesis of developmental plasticity of organisms, it may be possible (by pharmacological intervention in early ontogenetic stages of predisposed individual) to achieve such a setting of structural and functional parameters which could reduce the subsequent clinical manifestation of genetically induced hypertensive state.