Hearts with compensatory pressure-overload hypertrophy show an increased intracardiac activation of angiotensin II that may contribute to ischemic diastolic dysfunction. We studied whether pressure-overload hypertrophy in response to aortic banding would result in exaggerated diastolic dysfunction during low-flow ischemia and whether the specific inhibition of the cardiac angiotensin converting...

BACKGROUND Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) has a complex etiology. Factors responsible for development of impaired exercise tolerance and disease progression are incompletely defined. OBJECTIVES The authors sought to define the contributions of contractile reserve, ventriculo-arterial coupling (VAC) reserve, and chronotropic response to the progression of HFpEF. METHO...

Background—Obesity is characterized by impaired cardiac energetics, which may play a role in the development of diastolic dysfunction and inappropriate shortness of breath. We assessed whether, in obesity, derangement of energetics and diastolic function is further altered during acute cardiac stress. Methods and Results—Normal-weight (body mass index, 22 2 kg/m; n 9–17) and obese (body mass in...

BACKGROUND Obesity is characterized by impaired cardiac energetics, which may play a role in the development of diastolic dysfunction and inappropriate shortness of breath. We assessed whether, in obesity, derangement of energetics and diastolic function is further altered during acute cardiac stress. METHODS AND RESULTS Normal-weight (body mass index, 22±2 kg/m(2); n=9-17) and obese (body ma...

BACKGROUND Heart failure (HF) with normal ejection fraction (diastolic HF [DHF]) usually occurs in elderly patients with hypertension. The presence and significance of altered systolic and diastolic ventricular function in DHF is increasingly controversial. Our objective was to develop a clinically relevant large-animal model to better understand the pathophysiology of DHF. METHODS AND RESULT...

background systemic lupus erythematosus (sle) is an autoimmune connective-tissue disease involving multiple organs and systems. some evidence has demonstrated that disease activity could be associated with increased risk of organ damage. objectives the aim of this study was to determine the association between systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity index (sledai) scores and subclinical c...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to verify whether BNP might detect pre-clinical diastolic dysfunction (LVDD) in type-2 diabetic patients. METHODS One-hundred and twenty-seven consecutive outpatients with type-2 diabetes mellitus were enrolled into the study. Subjects with overt heart failure or NYHA class > 1, history of coronary artery disease, severe valvulopathy or chronic atri...

AIMS Diastolic dysfunction is common in geriatric heart failure. A reliable parameter to predict myocardium stiffness and relaxation under similar end-diastolic pressure is being developed. We propose a material and mathematical model for calculating myocardium stiffness based on the concept of linear correlation between [Formula: see text] and wedge pressure. METHODS AND RESULTS We enrolled ...

To evaluate cardiac performance in renal hypertension more precisely we determined cardiac function curves for 12 normotensive rats and 11 other rats with two-kidney Goldblatt hypertension. The hypertensive group (BP = 134 +/- 8 mm Hg) showed significant cardiac hypertrophy (44 +/- 1% increased ratio of heart weight to body weight, P less than 0.01) and markedly increased left ventricular strok...

Cardiac output maintenance is so fundamental that, when regional systolic function is impaired, as during ischemia, nonischemic segments compensate by becoming hypercontractile. By analogy, diastolic compensatory mechanisms that maintain filling volume must exist but remain to be fully elucidated. Viewing filling in spatially distinct (longitudinal, radial) mechanistic terms facilitates elucida...