Oxidative stress, vascular remodeling, and vascular inflammation in hypertension

Abstract

Hypertension is a major public health problem worldwide, affecting over 50 million individuals in the United States alone. The modern history of hypertension begins with the understanding of the cardiovascular system with the work of the physician William Harvey (1578?1657), who described the circulation of blood in his book De Motu Cordis. The English clergyman Stephen Hales made the first published measurement of blood pressure in 1733. Frederick Akbar Mahomed (1849-1884) made the first report of elevated blood pressure in a person without evidence of kidney disease. However, hypertension as a clinical entity came into being in 1896 with the invention of the cuff-based sphygmomanometer by Scipione Riva-Rocci. This apparatus has allowed the measurement of the blood pressure into the clinic. In 1905, Nikolai Korotkoff improved the technique by describing the Korotkoff sounds that are heard when the artery is auscultated with a stethoscope while the sphygmomanometer cuff is deflated.