Evidence assembled in this review indicates that sympathetic nervous system dysfunction is crucial in the development of heart failure and essential hypertension. This takes the form of persistent and adverse activation of sympathetic outflows to the heart and kidneys in both conditions. An important goal for clinical scientists is translation of the knowledge of pathophysiology, such as this, ...

Since 20 years the concept of specific imidazoline receptors has remained controversial. The problem with imidazoline receptors is mostly due to their functional similarity to alpha-adrenoceptors. In this work, a pharmacodynamic model of isolated rat jejunum longitudinal muscle strips constricted with acetylcholine (Ach) was applied to separate functional properties of the two types of receptor...

A man in his sixties was admitted to hospital late one evening after fainting in the bathroom. He had felt increasingly lethargic in the days immediately prior to hospitalisation, but had not otherwise noticed anything out of the ordinary. He had been treated for hypertension for the past 10 – 12 years, initially with amlodipine (Norvasc), subsequently with carvediol, irbesartan/hydrochlorothia...