Plasma asymmetric dimethylarginine and l-arginine levels in Chinese patients with essential hypertension without coronary artery disease

Abstract

: To investigate the plasma asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) levels and l-arginine in the essential 
hypertension (EH) patients without coronary artery disease. Patients and Methods: A total of 86 Chinese 
patients were enrolled in this study. All patients received coronary multidetector-row computed tomography 
to exclude distinct coronary stenosis and treadmill exercise testing to exclude microvascular angina pectoris. 
The patients with normal blood pressure (n = 26) were set as the control group. The EH patients were divided 
into three subgroups: the prehypertension group (n = 26), the stage 1 hypertension group (n = 26) and the stage 
2 hypertension group (n = 8). The plasma ADMA and l-arginine concentrations were measured by a validated 
high-throughput liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometric assay