More than one billion people suffer from high blood pressure, putting them at greater risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Blood pressure (systolic, diastolic, or pulse pressure) measurement is vital in several aspects of hypertension research. 

• To determine if an animal model of hypertension has been successfully created, researchers look for a chronic elevation of blood pressure levels.
• Blood pressure is measured to study the effects and progression of disease.The researcher may be watching to see if levels change over time, or if other cardiovascular diseases develop because of high blood pressure.
• Blood pressure is also used as an indication of treatment effectiveness.To control hypertension, blood pressure levels must return to the normal range.Therefore, effective treatments will lower and maintain levels.

DSI offers several options for measuring blood pressure, available for species ranging in size from mouse to primate.

An electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) is a measure of how the electrical activity of the heart changes over time as action potentials propagate throughout the heart during each cardiac cycle. Researchers interested in hypertension often use ECG measurements to look for potential damage to the heart because of high blood pressure.  An ECG can show:

• Obstruction of the heart’s blood supply due to cholesterol
• A previous myocardial infarction
• Swelling of the heart
• Arrhythmias

DSI offers several implantable telemetry options for measuring ECG and ECG in combination with blood pressure.  These implants are available for species ranging in size from mouse to primate.

Heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) may also be of interest to researchers.  HRV is the physiologic phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats and is often used in diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases including hypertension. Visit our HRV page to learn more. 

The baroreflex is the fastest mechanism to regulate acute blood pressure changes via controlling heart rate, contractility, and peripheral resistance.  The baroreflex or baroreceptor sensitivity (BRS) index is a measurement to quantify how much control the baroreflex has on the heart rate.  BRS can be valuable in assessing the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension.

To calculate BRS with DSI solutions, researchers would follow these steps:

Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) is an indirect measure of arterial stiffness, and the speed pressure waves travel through the lumen of a blood vessel. In the clinic, a higher pulse wave velocity is correlated with increased vascular stiffening (Hodis, 2011). Increased vascular stiffening is related to multiple cardiovascular diseases. Various techniques are available to clinicians with varying degrees of invasiveness. In laboratory animals, invasiveness is less of a concern and accuracy is paramount.

DSI offers dual pressure solutions that provide highly accurate pulse wave velocity measurements in rats, dogs, NHPs, and other larger animals. 

Visit our Pulse Wave Velocity page to learn more

Hypertension has been linked with chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system resulting in various comorbidities.  Apart from the hypertension, over-active sympathetic activity may be associated with insulin resistance, congestive heart failure and obstructive sleep apnea. Renal denervation is a clinical intervention where the sympathetic activity is reduced by various techniques. This intervention has been used successfully to treat drug-resistant hypertension along with various side-effects. Renal denervation is appealing because it can be performed locally with less impact to the broader nervous system. 

To study nerve activity, DSI recommends implanting both the F50-W-F2 and the HD-S10 in a rat, and collecting data with LabChart. Visit our small animal telemetry page to learn more.

Cardiometabolic research is an increasingly popular area of interest as further understanding of the relationship between metabolic and cardiovascular diseases is gained.  In particular, hypertension has been linked to metabolic disease, although the relationship between the two is not fully understood.  Hypertension appears to be a risk factor for metabolic disease, but disease can also cause disruption in blood pressure.  Researchers interested in studying this relationship and origins of hypertension, may wish to measure glucose in addition to cardiovascular endpoints to see if improvements in metabolism result in blood pressure improvements or vice versa.

DSI offers an implantable telemetry device for measuring continuous blood glucose in mice, rats, and large animals.  In large animals, researchers have the option to measure blood pressure and glucose from a single device.