Cardiology and Heart Failure

Molecular Cardiology and Hypertension

Molecular cardiology is a new area of cardiovascular medicine that aims to apply molecular biological techniques for the mechanistic investigation, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular disease. As an emerging discipline, it has changed our conceptual thinking of cardiovascular development, disease etiology, and pathophysiology. Although molecular cardiology is still at a very early stage, it has opened a promising avenue for understanding and controlling cardiovascular disease. A great interest of the laboratory is the identification of novel circulating factors that regulate cardiac biology, including aging and hypertrophy.

Hypertension is the single most important risk factor for stroke. It causes about 50 per cent of ischemic strokes and also increases the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. The damage that hypertension causes happens over time and is often only diagnosed when considerable damage has already happened to the body’s blood vessels. The increase in cardiovascular risk has primarily been described in terms of elevated systolic pressure in those over age 60 years and elevation in diastolic pressure in younger individuals.