Hostile personality characteristics and prostaglandins in essential hypertension

The hostile personality characteristic of dominance was shown to be significantly lower in a group of 34 male patients with essential hypertension than in a general illness control group (n = 17) in the USA. This replicates a previous finding from research in Greece into this and other conditions of presumably psychogenic origin. Nonspecific neurotic syndromes (as identified by the Present State Examination, a semistructured interview) were more prevalent in hypertensives than in controls, but no clear neurotic cases were found. Levels of the prostaglandins 6-keto prostaglandin F1A and thromboxane B2 did not differ significantly between groups, but the former was positively correlated with dominance in the control group. An interpretation of these results in terms of the repressed hostility theory is offered.