During the congress of the Spanish Society of Cardiology held in Barcelona, specialists from the Autonomous Community of Navarra received the award for the best communication, among the hundreds presented at the forum. This is a work on hypertension carried out jointly by scientists from the Navarra Health Service and two centers of the University of Navarra: the research center Médica Aplicada (CIMA) and the University Clinic.

The authors are Javier Díez, Arantxa González, Begoña López, Diego Martín and Joaquín Barba, from the University of Navarra; and Elisa Lozano, Lourdes Tomás and Manuel Serrano, from the Navarra Health Service. Their communication is entitled "Plasma cardiotrophin-1 is a marker of development and regression of left ventricular hypertrophy in hypertensive patients".

This line of research developed with cardiotrophin-1 began in 2003 and this year has already been published twice in the international journal Journal of Hypertension and in presentations at two European congresses, one on Cardiology and the other on Hypertension.

Cardiotrophin-1, from heart to blood

According to Dr. Javier Díez, cardiotrophin-1 is a protein present in the blood, to which it reaches from the heart when this organ produces it in excess when subjected to overload. An example of this added stress is the increase in blood pressure in hypertensive patients.

This researcher of the CIMA and specialist of the University Clinic points out that the work "demonstrates two things: that the abnormal increase in the blood concentration of cardiotrophin-1 is associated with the exaggerated growth (hypertrophy) of the heart in hypertensive patients and that in treated patients its decrease coincides with the reduction of cardiac hypertrophy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the measurement of cardiotrophin-1 would be a simpler, more reliable and cheaper method than those currently available to detect the presence of cardiac hypertrophy in hypertensive patients."

Dr. Díez suggests 3 reasons for studying whether the heart of a hypertensive patient is hypertrophied: "Because not all drugs used to treat hypertension reduce cardiac hypertrophy, because the presence of hypertrophy is associated with a worse overall cardiovascular prognosis of the patient, and because it constitutes the prelude to the two main heart complications to which the hypertensive patient is exposed: heart failure and atrial fibrillation".

Finally, he illustrates the health importance of the problem with the fact that more than two thirds of patients with hypertension present this cardiac pathology today in Spain: almost 5.5 million of the more than 8 million hypertensive patients.