Stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats receiving a high salt diet were orally treated by the calcium antagonist lacidipine, at a dose which did not reduce systolic blood pressure. We observed that lacidipine inhibited the salt-induced cardiac hypertrophy and the concomitant increase of mRNA transcripts for preproendothelin-1 in ventricles. These data show that elevated blood pressure cannot necessarily account for cardiac hypertrophy and indicate that the therapeutic action of lacidipine is not only related to its haemodynamic properties, but also to the inhibition of the gene expression of growth factors such as endothelin.