Cardiac growth can be divided into two categories: normal growth in the developmental process and cardiac hypertrophy induced by hemodynamic overload. Since cardiac myocytes are terminally differentiated and lose their ability to duplicate soon after birth, they respond to increased workload only by an increase in cell size (hypertrophy), not by an increase in cell number (hyperplasia). Moreover, the induction of specific gene expression is observed in cardiac hypertrophy. Cardiac hypertrophy induced by hemodynamic overload has two important aspects. The first is a medical issue. Cardiac hypertrophy and the resulting heart failure due to valvular disease and hypertension are one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity in humans.