Use was made of mitochondria isolated from heart left ventricles of either spontaneously hypertensive or age-matched Wistar-Kyoto rats used as a control to find out whether hypertrophy (5-week-old rats) or hypertrophy/hypertension (24-week-old rats) can cause change in the mechanisms by which ATP is synthesised via ATP synthase and subsequently exported via the ADP/ATP translocator outside mitochondria. To do this, photometric measurements were made of the rate of ATP appearance in the extramitochondrial phase, which occurs as a result of ADP addition to mitochondria. In mitochondria from spontaneously hypertensive rats deficit of ATP production was found dependent on changes in the KmADP and Vmax values of both the ADP/ATP translocator and the ATP synthase. The ADP/ATP translocator was found to determine the rate of ATP production outside mitochondria in all the tested samples. In an initial investigation carried out to ascertain how cell ATP deficit can be counterbalanced, an increase in both adenylate kinase and creatine kinase activities was found in both hypertrophy and hypertrophy/hypertension. A possible increase in anaerobic glycolysis was also suggested by the increased lactate dehydrogenase activity.

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