ABSTRACT

Many of the medications currently used in the treatment of essential hypertension produce unacceptable side effects in a significant proportion of users, leading to reduced compliance and poor management of the disorder. As a result, there has been a growing interest in recent years in the potential use of nonpharmaceutical interventions for both the treatment and prevention of hypertension, including stress management, exercise, and dietary manipulation. Among the dietary interventions investigated, based upon the results of animal and preliminary human trials, the manipulation of dietary n-6 essential fatty acids and their metabolites appears to demonstrate promise for the attenuation of blood pressure (BP) development in individuals at risk for hypertension.

Much of the evidence for a relationship between dietary intake of various levels and types of n-6 fatty acids and systemic blood pressure (BP) has derived from work conducted on rats. Much of that work, in turn, has derived from studies comparing the effects of different dietary fatty acids on blood pressure development in the genetically hypertensive spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR), a commonly used animal model for human essential hypertension. Early studies in these models demonstrated that long-term feeding of diets low in n-6 fatty acids, i.e., 18:2n-6 and 20:4n-6, exacerbates BP development under normal and salt-loaded conditions (1,2). The reversal of pressor responses in these animal models upon administration/replacement of dietary 18:2n-6 suggests a protective role of the n-6 fatty acids in the regulation of BP. Perhaps the strongest evidence for a role of dietary n-6 fatty acids as a treatment modality in essential hypertension has derived from studies on SHR in which the dietary levels of various n-6 fatty acids were manipulated by the use of