Circulating Adipokine Levels in Non-diabetic Subjects with High Normal Blood Pressure.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the levels of the adipokines, resistin and adiponectin in normotensive and high normal blood pressure patients.
Methods: Circulating levels of the adipokines, resistin and adiponectin were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA; R'D Systems, Minneapolis) in 20 high normal blood pressure patients and in 20 age-matched normotensive non-diabetic subjects. Statistical analysis was performed with analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Results: The control group showed non-significantly decreased levels of resistin when compared with patients with high normal blood pressure [systolic 130-139 mmHg; diastolic 85-89 mmHg] (12.25 vs 14.38 pg/mL, p = 0.40). There were significantly higher levels of adiponectin in the control group when compared with high normal blood pressure patients (11.3 vs 7.51 μg/mL, p = 0.028).
Conclusions: High normal blood pressure patients have increased levels of resistin and lower values of adiponectin when compared with age-matched non-diabetic normotensive subjects. This may explain why those patients showed more progression to hypertension, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular risk than normotensive subjects.