Molecular Metabolic Fingerprinting Approach to Investigate the Metabolic Alterations in Heart, Aorta and Renal Tissues of Nitric Oxide Deficient Hypertensive Rats

Hypertension is the leading cause of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) globally. It is well known that the incidence of several CVDs, including stroke, coronary heart disease, and peripheral artery disease, is closely linking to hypertension. Nitric oxide is the imperative regulator of the vascular system and its deficiency leads to elevated blood pressure and metabolic alterations in the tissues such as liver, kidney heart and aorta. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that uses infrared radiation to vibrate molecular bonds with in the sample that absorbs it and different vibrational spectra can be used to explore the qualitative and quantitative constituent of macromolecules. The aim of this study was to compare molecular changes in the tissues of normal control rats with nitric oxide deficient hypertensive rats. Hypertension was induced in male albino Wistar rats by oral administration of L-NAME (40mg/kg body weight) dissolved in drinking water daily for four weeks. Results indicate that FTIR can successfully identify the molecular changes in hypertensive groups. Overall, the findings demonstrate that in nitric oxide-deficient animals, the heart, kidney and aortic tissues metabolic programs were altered through an increase in structural modifications in proteins and triglycerides and a quantitative alteration in proteins lipids and transcription factors.