Curcumin and Verapamil Effects on Mouse Hypertension

Treatment was administered following the protocols previously used by the group [6 (link)]. Briefly, 10 mg/kg/day for VER treatment (equivalent to 480 mg/day in human patients) and 60 mg/kg/day CUR (Super Bio-Curcumin^®, from Life Extension^®, Lauderdale Lakes, FL, USA, total curcuminoids complex with essential oils of turmeric rhizome by HPLC 400 mg) were freshly prepared once per week. Both compounds were dissolved in drinking water with 1% DMSO. The vehicle control group (VEH) consisted of WT and CD mice drinking water containing 1% DMSO. Experimental groups were: 1) WT and CD mice drinking verapamil (VER), 2) WT and CD mice drinking curcumin (CUR), and 3) WT and CD mice drinking a combination of both compounds (CURVER). Treatment was started at eight weeks of age (young mice). All animals drank their treatments for four weeks before measuring arterial pressure and were then sacrificed at 12 weeks of age (young adult).
Two-way ANOVA of repeated measures did not show any significant interaction between time and treatment (Males: F_{(45, 240)} = 0.7963, p = 0.8189; Females: F_{(45, 240)} = 0.7335, p = 0.8936) (Figure S5A). Also, there were no significant differences in the treatment consumption in relation to genotype (F_{3, 24} = 0.1347, p = 0.9384) (Figure S5B).
In agreement with previous reports [4 (link)], both male and female CD mice had significantly lower body weights compared with WT mice (effect of genotype F_{1, 102} = 92.76, p < 0.0001 in males; F_1,62 = 38.57, p < 0.0001 in females), without any significant effect of treatment (Figure S5C,D). Supplementary Table S6 shows a detailed statistical analysis.