Inflammatory processes appear to play an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases.It has been established that inflammation has a pivotal role in the atherosclerosis.As a major risk factor contributed to atherosclerosis,hypertension seems to be a chronically low-grade inflammation process.Lots of studies suggested that blood pressure elevation is significantly positive correlation with the levels of inflammatory mediators,such as C-reactive protein.Inflammation may promote the process of hypertension.Furthermore,inflammation is highly associated with cardiac fibrosis and vascular remodeling in hypertension.Current clinical trials,for example,ASCOT-LLA suggested that use atorvastatin to reduce the inflammatory reaction in hypertensive patients with normal concentration of cholesterol would decrease the major cardiovascular events(relative risk reduction 36%).This paper summarizes the association inflammation with hypertension as well as cardiac fibrosis and vascular remodeling,and tries to explore the clinical significance of the association.

Objective To investigate the features of remodeling of intramyocardial small arteries(IMSAs) in rats with idiopathic hypertension(SHR).Methods12-week-old male SHR rats(experimental group,n=10) with the age and sex matched Wistar Kyoto rats(WKY,control group,n=10) were included in present study.Experiments were continued for 18 weeks.The blood pressure of all the animals was measured at the beginning and at the end of experiment,and then all the animals were sacrificed.The left ventricle tissue sections were stained with HE,Sirius-red,elasticity fibrin and collagen fibrin double staining(P/VB) for morphological evaluation of IMSAs.The wall area(WA),luminal area(LA) and percent wall area(%WA) of IMSAs were assessed with the compute-assisted image analysis system.The vascular smooth muscle cells(VSMCs) were recognized by ?-SMA immunohistochemical staining,the proliferation and apoptosis of IMSAs were demonstrated by proliferating cell nuclear antigen(PCNA) immunohistochemical staining and TdT-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling(TUNEL) technique,respectively.The apoptosis index(AI) and proliferation index(PI) were calculated respectively.Results Systolic blood pressure(SBP) in SHR group at week 12 and week 30 were significantly higher than those in WKY group(172.00?9.78mmHg vs 123.40?5.10mmHg,200.50?14.15mmHg vs 116.30?9.38mmHg,respectively,P