Platelet aggregation in spontaneous hypertension: genetic determination and correlation analysis

Hyper-responsive platelets are often found in essential hypertension. It has also been suggested that in hypertensive patients platelets may serve as an easily accessible indicator of abnormalities in contractile cell function. To test these suggestions, we analysed the relationship between platelet aggregation and genetic hypertension in the rat.

Linear regression analysis of mean values of recombinant inbred strains was used to evaluate the relationship between blood pressure and ADP-induced platelet aggregation.

ADP-induced platelet aggregation in platelet-rich plasma in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) was significantly decreased compared with in normotensive Brown Norway (BN) rats. However, in recombinant inbred strains, derived from (SHR x BN) F2 hybrids, correlation analysis revealed that platelet aggregation and blood pressure are independent traits.

The present results suggest strongly that spontaneous hypertension and platelet hypo-aggregability in SHR were linked together by chance due to drift during selective inbreeding. The absence of a correlation between the two traits also indicates that alterations in platelet function in essential hypertension, often found in population-based studies, may have to be reaffirmed in genetically better-defined situations, e.g. by pedigree analysis.