Blood Pressure Variability, Baroreflex Sensitivity, and Cardiovascular Responses to Sympathoexcitation in Healthy Normotensive Humans

Liu Zhong, M.D., Ph.D.

IRB #: 4352-05

This protocol is exciting on several fronts. We recruit healthy young adults who undergo head-up tilt testing, autonomic baroreflex control of heart rate testing with drugs that lower and raise blood pressure within normal physiologic limits, mental stress, cold stress (hand in ice-water, called the "cold pressor test"), and exercise stress (static handgrip exercise to exhaustion). Then we fit these subjects with an ambulatory blood pressure cuff that measures their blood pressure every 15-20 minutes for 24 hours. We are looking for correlations among these measures, and how beta-2 adrenergic receptor genotype influences these traits.