BP fluctuations in the normotensive versus the hypertensive cardiovascular system: simulation and experiment

A computerised model has been designed in order to simulate blood pressure (BP) control and mean BP (MBP) fluctuations in the normal and the hypertensive cardiovascular system. The purpose of this model is to compare between the two systems by allowing their control limbs to function naturally, hoping to obtain the BP fluctuations as experimentally observed in the two strains. In experimental studies performed on normotensive (WKY) vs. spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), the authors detected basic differences in the pattern of BP fluctuations. When introducing the respective control parameters of the vagal and beta-sympathetic limbs (experimentally measured) for the two strains of rats, the differences between WKY and SHR cause the low-frequency BP fluctuations to be slightly, but consistently, reduced in SHR. Among other findings, these experiments showed a clearly reduced β-sympathetic gain in SHR as compared to WKY