CARDIAC BAROREFLEXES AND HYPERTENSION

SUMMARY 1. The role of cardiac reflexes in baroreflex control mechanisms and the changes that occur in chronic hypertension is reviewed. The rapid resetting properties of the arterial baroreceptors ensures its role in short‐term rather than long‐term control of blood pressure. 2. In hypertensive humans and animals, the baroreceptor‐heart rate reflex has diminished sensitivity due mainly to reduced maximum capacity of the cardiac vagal component rather than a change to the sympathetic. 3. The development of this vagal deficit in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) coincides with the onset of cardiac hypertrophy rather than vascular hypertrophy. A combination of chronic perindopril treatment regimens in young and older SHR showed that the vagal deficit was better correlated with the degree of cardiac hypertrophy than with other variables such as blood pressure, hypertension or indices of vascular hypertrophy. Similar results have been shown for renovascular hypertension in rats. 4. The bradycardia produced by electrical stimulation of the vagus in urethane anaesthetized young SHR was enhanced compared to Wistar‐Kyoto rats (WKY) while responses observed in adult SHR and WKY were similar, suggesting that the vagal deficit in hypertensive rats is not due to a defect in the efferent arm of the baroreflex. 5. The association of the vagal deficit with cardiac hypertrophy, but not with the vagal efferent pathways, suggests an important role for cardiac afferents in hypertension in mediating the baroreflex deficit. 6. A diminished baroreflex and also a reduced heart rate variability is an independent risk factor for sudden death following myocardial infarction. Thus, antihypertensive therapy, which more effectively reduces cardiac hypertrophy, should have a desirable effect on baroreceptor reflexes and therefore in reducing blood pressure variability.