Peculiarities Of Changes Of Apelin-13 Concentration In Patients With Essential Hypertension And Extrasystole

Introduction. Hypertension is one of the leading causes of disability and mortality among cardiovascular diseases, so today new metabolic markers of cardiovascular risk are being actively studied. One of them is apelin-13. Objective: to assess the concentration of apelin-13 in patients with essential hypertension and frequent extrasystole. Materials and methods. 156 patients with stage II essential hypertension were examined. 124 of them had frequent symptomatic extrasystoles, 32 patients had no arrhythmias and were considered to the comparison group. 30 practically healthy normotensive persons were considered to the control group. All patients underwent a complete clinical and anthropometric examination, blood pressure measurement, automatic daily blood pressure monitoring, daily electrocardiogram monitoring, echocardiography and the assessment of serum apelin-13 concentration. Results. It was found that the concentration of apelin-13 in patients with hypertension was significantly lower compared to the control group. Moreover, the average content of apelin-13 was significantly (p = 0.02) lower in patients with extrasystole than in those without arrhythmia. The lowest concentration of apelin-13 was noticed in patients with ventricular arrhythmias. Conclusion. The results confirm the existing assumptions about the protective role of apelin-13 in preventing the progression of cardiovascular diseases due to counteracting the increase in blood pressure and life-threatening arrhythmias. Keywords: essential arterial hypertension, apelin-13, extrasystole, smoking, obesity