查看文章

A number of investigators have examined the hypothesis that the magnitude and pat-terns of acute autonomic nervous system changes in response to stress may contribute to the development of hypertension. 1^ Early research on this phenomenon, known as" reactivity," demonstrated that mice and spontaneously hypertensive rats exposed to chronic stressors such as territorial conflict, residential crowding, disruptions in social status, and physical stressors showed an activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Notably, these transient elevations of autonomic nervous system arousal have been observed to pre-cede the development of sustained hypertension. 5-8 In addition, studies have dem-onstrated that the combination of behavioral stress and dietary sodium act synergistically to augment blood pressure in dogs. 910 Importantly, neither the chronic daily stress nor the high sodium …