BRAIN AND HYPERTENSION

Malfunction of the central nervous control of arterial blood pressure and related parameters of the cardiovascular system has long been suspected to play a role in essential hypertension in man. A cause of hypertension in about 90% of the patients with this disease cannot be identified. Similarly, in the different models of genetic hypertension in animals the underlying mechanisms remain to be delineated. In a substantial part of the cases, in animals and in man, the high blood pressure of hypertension can be explained by a dysfunction of the central nervous system. © 1979.