Cardiac sympathetic nerves as the final common pathway in the induction of adaptive cardiac hypertrophy.

A mild to moderate adaptive hypertrophy of a cardiac chamber may be beneficial in increasing the capacity of the heart to cope with an increased work-load. However, in pathological hypertrophy the myocardial muscle cell can hypertrophy to such an extent that myocardial performance deteriorates [ 11. To devise a medical treatment that could modify or even prevent the occurrence of adaptive cardiac hypertrophy in response to a pathological work-load, it is necessary that the nature of the triggering event should be understood. In other words, what exactly is the intermediate link between the physiological or pathological condition evoking cardiac hypertrophy and the biochemical events leading to growth of the individual cardiac muscle cell?