Written Project and Report in Physiology

Written Report on Hypertension

Section 1 : The article I chose bears the title The Pathophysiology of Hypertension ' and is authored by Gareth Beevers , Gregory Y .H . Lip and Eoin O 'Brien . It was originally published in the British Medical Journal in April 14 , 2001 and was made available in the online version of the journal

Section 2 : The authors acknowledge that there is no single factor to which hypertension , especially essential hypertension , can be attributed to . In the article , they reviewed all the known physiological mechanisms that work together to maintain

blood pressure within a normal range Then , they presented the possibilities in which failure of these mechanisms may contribute to hypertension

Section 3 . There are many ways in which the body maintains normal blood pressure . First is through the balance between cardiac output (volume of blood pumped by the heart per minute ) and peripheral vascular resistance (Beevers , Lip and O 'Brien , 2001 . Majority of hypertensive patients exhibit normal cardiac output but their arterioles register high resistance . This is because the smooth muscle cells associated with these vessels continuously contract . Hence , the blood vessels are also constantly constricted and begin to thicken , leading to permanent hypertension

The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAA ) system also regulates blood pressure . Renin is released by the kidneys into the bloodstream where it acts upon the protein angiotensinogen . When converted to angiotensin II it stimulates the adrenal gland to secrete aldosterone . The effect is that more sodium and water are retained in the body contributing to an increase...