Calcium and Hypertension: The Emerging Connection

Excerpt

Since ringer first showed the importance of calcium in cardiac muscle contraction, a role for calcium has been increasingly recognized in mediating various cellular responses to external stimuli involved in neuromuscular function, stimulus-secretion coupling, and humoral target-organ effects. The use of calcium channel-blocking agents in the treatment of hypertension shows the critical importance of calcium in the biochemical control of vascular smooth muscle tone, and thus of blood pressure homeostasis.

Despite these advances, the relation of clinical aspects of calcium metabolism such as dietary calcium intake, renal disposition of calcium, and circulating levels of calcium-regulating hormones, as well as of