Combined effects of hypertension and chronic running program on rat heart.

Previous studies in hearts of female rats have demonstrated that ventricular hypertrophy due to systolic overload, when combined with hypertrophy induced by a chronic swimming program, results in increased cardiac performance and enhanced contractile protein activity compared with the effects of hypertension alone. To explore how a chronic running program affects the function of hypertensive hearts, renal hypertension was created in female rats, and the animals were subjected to a program of chronic treadmill running. Running alone caused enhanced cardiac function, an increase in myosin adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) activity, and an increase in the percent of the V1 myosin isoenzyme. Hypertension alone caused cardiac hypertrophy with a depression in myosin ATPase activity and a decrease in the percent of the V1 isoenzyme. Running improved cardiac function in hearts of normotensive rats but had no effect in hearts of hypertensive rats. Despite the diminished myosin ATPase activity in hearts of hypertensive runners and the decrease in percent of the V1 isoenzyme, cardiac function was well maintained. The results demonstrate that a chronic running program in hypertensive rats, in contrast to a chronic swimming program, had virtually no effect on cardiac performance or contractile proteins. The dissociation between myocardial performance and the contractile proteins implicates other biochemical mechanisms in the adaptations observed.