CEU-UCH professor Rodilla Sala discovers that stiff artery walls cause high blood pressure instead of being its consequence

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CEU-UCH professor Rodilla Sala discovers that stiff artery walls cause high blood pressure instead of being its consequenceultureCode=en 

Artery, the Association for Research into Arterial Structure and Physiology, at its last international congress, organized in Maastricht, awarded the investigation led by Enrique Rodilla with the second prize. The stiffness of the arterial wall can be determined through the pulse wave velocity, which can be measured by use of an applanation tonometer. Rodilla, who is a medical professor at the Castellón campus of CEU-UCH Cardenal Herrera University, and his team discovered that this stiffness has predictive value for the development of hypertension. This suggests that arterial stiffness, instead of being a consequence of high blood pressure, might be its cause. Stiffness of the arterial walls can, in other words, be the best predictor of this pathology.
According to professor Rodilla, “high blood pressure – more than 140/90 mmHg – is one of the most frequent pathologies in modern society, and it is the most important risk factor of cardiovascular illness, which still is the number one cause of death in Spain. However, in the vast majority of cases the mechanism that causes high blood pressure is unknown.” On the other hand, investigation techniques were developed the last few years that enable measuring the harm associated with high blood pressure, on the level of the vascular as well as cardiac and renal system.
Patients that suffer from hypertension have stiff arteries – that is, the artery walls have lost their elasticity – and, therefore, “the research question that we asked ourselves at the start of our investigation was whether it is high blood pressure that hardens the arteries or whether it is stiff arteries that increase blood pressure,” says Rodilla.
Cause or consequence
The research that was awarded by Artery studied 125 patients with normal blood pressure. The investigators determined the stiffness of the artery walls and vascular injury with a tonometer, which measures the oscillations produced by the pulse in the arteries, at the start of the investigation and after a year had passed. “The group of patients that at the start of the investigation had stiffer artery walls, though normal blood pressure, developed hypertension, while the patients who initially had lower blood pressure a year later still had normal blood pressure values,” professor Rodilla says. “This suggests that it is stiffness of the arterial walls that causes hypertension.”
The research was carried out at the Unit of Hypertension and Vascular Risk, which belongs to the Department of Internal Medicine at the Hospital of Sagunto and was conducted by Enrique Rodilla Sala, who is CEU-UCH Professor of Medicine at the Castellón campus. Two students of the fourth year in Medicine at the same campus worked as interns on the project. The Artery jury, which met in Maastricht from October 9 to 11, awarded the research, titled ‘Elevated arterial stiffness precedes development of hypertension in never treated prehypertensive patients’ the second price.