Does Fibro-muscular Dysplasia Cause High Blood Pressure?

For reasons that still remain a mystery, some middle-aged women develop a disease known as fibro-muscular dysplasia. Physicians continue to research the causes of this disease, a disease that affects certain medium and large blood vessels. Researchers have so-far ruled out any type of inflammation. Researchers have also found that many patients with fibro-muscular dysplasia have something called a "string of beads."

What is in that "string of beads"? Those beads contain atherosclerotic plagues, plagues that can form in large or small segments. In patients with fibro-muscular dysplasia those plagues tend to be tiny segments, segments that form part of a web-like structure. That web-like structure can form on any layer of a blood vessel. That web-like structure concerns physicians, because it can restrict blood flow.

Some resistance to blood flow is normal. When the heart pumps, sending blood into the aortic artery, it exerts a force on the blood vessels. The blood vessels show some resistance to that force. That resistance accounts for the acceptable level of blood pressure that is found in the circulatory system of a healthy man or woman.

Whenever something, such as the web-like structure described above, reduces the size of a blood vessel, that vessel shows greater resistance to the force exerted by the pumping heart. As the narrower vessel increases the amount of its resistance, it also causes a rise in the blood pressure. In other words, fibro-muscular dysplasia can cause high blood pressure.

High blood pressure always concerns physicians. Doctors are now using angiography to look for the development of a "string of beads," a tell-tale indication that a patient has fibro-muscular dysplasia. Angiography provides doctors with a picture of the interior of an examined blood vessel. Doctors can not do an angiography on the entire body at one time. They must focus on a specific blood vessel.