| Summary |
Blume (1986) found that women attain high blood pressure quicker than men during chronic ethanol ingestion. One purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether or not this phenomenon will also occur in the ethanolinduced hypertensive rat model, that is, do female rats have a steeper ethanol-induced increase in blood pressure over time than male rats? Immediately, the assumption had to be made that chronic ethanol treatment would lead to hypertension in both male and female rats. The second, and more important purpose of this study was to compare the reactivities of the coronary arteries of male and female rats in response to known vasodilators. It is proposed that chronic ethanol ingestion causes a disturbance in the endothelial cells lining the coronary arteries of rat hearts. Moreover, if this disturbance is indicative of the effects of alcohol on peripheral circulation, it could be a possible contributing factor in the etiology of alcohol-induced hypertension. It has been shown that female rats have a steeper rise in blood pressure over time than male rats, even though there was no significant difference in blood ethanol concentrations. It has also been shown that there were marked differences between male and female ethanol-treated rats in response to known endothelium-dependent vasodilators. These endothelial disturbances were more pronounced in female rats for reasons that must be left to further research. |
