The 2009 Carl Ludwig Lecture: pathophysiology of the human sympathetic nervous system in cardiovascular diseases: the transition from mechanisms to medical management

Abstract

Sympathetic nervous system responses typically are regionally differentiated, with activation in one outflow sometimes accompanying no change or sympathetic inhibition in another. Regional sympathetic activity is best studied in humans by recording from postganglionic sympathetic efferents (multiunit or single fiber recording) and by isotope dilution-derived measurement of organ-specific norepinephrine release to plasma (regional “norepinephrine spillover”). Evidence assembled in this review indicates that sympathetic nervous system abnormalities are crucial in the development of cardiovascular disorders, notably heart failure, essential hypertension, disorders of postural circulatory control causing syncope, and “psychogenic heart disease,” heart disease attributable to mental stress and psychiatric illness. These abnormalities involve persistent, adverse activation of sympathetic outflows to the heart and kidneys in heart failure and hypertension, episodic or ongoing cardiac sympathetic activation in psychogenic heart disease, and defective sympathetic circulatory reflexes in disorders of postural circulatory control. An important goal for clinical scientists is translation of knowledge of pathophysiology, such as this, into better treatment for patients. The achievement of this “mechanisms-to-management” transition is at differing stages of development with the different conditions. Clinical translation is mature in cardiac failure, knowledge of cardiac neural pathophysiology having led to introduction of β-adrenergic blockers, an effective therapy. With essential hypertension, perhaps we are on the cusp of effective translation, with recent successful testing of selective catheter-based renal sympathetic nerve ablation in patients with resistant hypertension, an intervention firmly based on demonstration of activation of the renal sympathetic outflow. With psychogenic heart disease and postural syncope syndromes, knowledge of the neural pathophysiology is emerging, but clinical translation remains for the future.