Current Vascular Pharmacology - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2015

In Chinese medicine, Zheng-hou, instead of disease, is used to define complex medical problems in clinical practice. In the postgenomics era, it becomes particularly compelling to review the application of Zheng-hou in characterizing complex clinical problems independent of disease or syndrome. While disease or syndrome describes a pathological phenotype or phenotypes, Zheng-hou spells the pathological phenome. Read More

Vascular diseases are usually caused by multifactorial pathogeneses involving genetic and environmental factors. Our current understanding of vascular disease is, however, based on the focused genotype/phenotype studies driven by the “one-gene/one-phenotype” hypothesis. Drugs with “pure target” at individual molecules involved in the pathophysiological pathways are the mainstream of current clinical treatments and Read More

Stroke is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It has been generally accepted that cerebrovascular remodeling during hypertension is one of the major contributors to the increased risk of stroke. Volume-regulated Cl- channel (VRCC) and calcium-activated Cl- channel (CaCC) are the two predominant types of Cl- channels in cerebral vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). Recent studies have de Read More

Vascular disease constitutes the leading health problem throughout the entire world. Current therapies for vascular disease mainly rely on comprehensive strategies including control of risk factors, vascular interventions and conventional supportive treatments. To improve the preventive and therapeutic efficacies of current approaches, novel combinational therapies are required. Microparticles (MPs) are small Read More

Adrenomedullin is a highly conserved vasoactive peptide participating in a variety of physiological and pathophysiological processes including pregnancy, embryonic development, tumor progression and regulation of vascular tone. In particular, adrenomedullin expression is widely distributed throughout the cardiovascular system including heart, lungs, blood vessels and kidneys. The observation that adrenomedullin Read More

Extracellular signal regulated kinase½ (ERK1/2) signaling is critical to endothelin-1 (ET-1)-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. This study was to investigate ERK1/2 signaling and hypertrophic response to ET-1 stimulation in cardiomyocytes (CMs) from spontaneous hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY). Primary neonatal SHR and WKY CMs were exposed to ET-1 for up to 24 hrs. Minimal basal ERK1/2 Read More

Background and Objectives: Stroke is a disease with high morbidity, disability, and fatality. Since ischemic stroke is the most common kind of stroke, increasing attention has been paid to its prevention and treatment. Given the limitations of conventional medicine, there is growing interest in Chinese Medicine (CM), especially Chinese Patent Medicine (CPM) for its convenience and stability. Studies of CM show that Chinese Pate Read More

Objective: To reveal the cutoff point and influencing factors in the dynamic change in phenotypic group in patients with stable angina pectoris (SAP) after Xinxuekang capsule treatment. Methods: Five hundred and seventy-six SAP patients were randomly assigned to receive Xinxuekang (XXK) capsules or Compound Danshen (CDS) tablets for 8 weeks. Global similarity degree analysis and nonlinear mixed effects modeling (NON Read More

Objective: There are more than 300 million patients with hypertension in China, and at least 1 in 5 is using or has ever used Chinese Medicine (CM) treatment. Scope: This article reviews the efficacy and safety of CM as monotherapy and in combination with western medicine (WM) to explore its potential role in the clinical management of hypertension. Methods: Relevant articles were identified through PubMed, Chinese National Read More

Background: Increasing attention is being given to the use of Chinese medicine (CM) for preventing and healing vascular complications of chronic ulcerative lesions of diabetic foot. Objectives: The purposes of this paper are to describe some benefits of CM for the treatment of diabetic foot and to provide some expert opinions based on some case studies and evidence from documented Chinese traditional medicine literature. M Read More

Background: The clinical benefits of the application of renin-angiotensin system (RAS) blockade, i.e., angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB), have been well established in patients with diabetic nephropathies (DN). Since the combination therapy with Chinese Medicine (CM) and conventional western medicine (CWM) is considered an effective approach to many conditions, Read More

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Moreover, angina pectoris is one of the most important types of CHD. Therefore, prevention and effective treatment of angina pectoris is of utmost importance in both China and western countries. However, undesirable effects of antianginal therapy do influence treatment adherence to a certain extent. Therefore, it’s not surprising that, com Read More

Background: Combination treatment has been a popular therapeutic strategy in diabetes and related vascular complications. However, the reasonable dosing regimen in combination treatment remains unknown. Nowadays, pharmacokinetics (PK) is becoming a useful approach to reveal the mechanisms of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and reasonable drug compatibility in combination treatment. Scope: This article review Read More