Effects of hypertension and exercise in the brain and heart vasculome of rats

The concept of the vasculome posits that the microvascular network within each organ is unique and helps maintain organ homeostasis under normal conditions. Conversely, an unhealthy vasculome should contribute to organ pathophysiology during disease. In this study, we mapped the vasculome in brains and hearts from normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), and asked whether exercise could renormalize the hypertensive vasculome. Microarrays were used to profile the transcriptome of microvessel endothelial cells isolated from brains and hearts of WKY and SHR. Sedentary rats were compared with those subjected to 8 weeks of treadmill running exercise. In sedentary rats, a significant number of genes were differentially expressed in SHR versus WKY, comprising many pathways previously implicated in the vasculome effects of hypertension. After treadmill running for 8 weeks, the brain and heart vasculomes in both WKY and SHR were altered, without any detectable changes in blood pressure. In SHR, exercise significantly renormalized subsets of genes and pathways that were initially affected by hypertension. These data suggest that some of the beneficial physiologic effects of exercise may involve the rescue of diseased vasculomes in brains and hearts. Further studies are warranted to explore vasculome databases for potential neurovascular and cardiovascular mechanisms, targets, and biomarkers in hypertension.