ANF secretion and renal responses to volume expansion with equilibrated blood

To evaluate the role of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) in the renal response to acute blood volume expansion without hemodilution, a reservoir syringe filled with donor rat blood was connected to the femoral artery and vein of anesthetized Sprague-Dawley rats to allow rapid equilibration of the reservoir with the intravascular blood. Volume expansion with blood from the reservoir in two steps (of 1 and 1.5% body wt, separated by 1 h, n = 5 rats) produced a mean peak increase in plasma immunoreactive ANF from 99 +/- 21 to 1,310 +/- 230 pg/ml (P less than 0.001); plasma ANF levels throughout these experiments correlated significantly with simultaneously measured urine flow (r = 0.74, P less than 0.005) and sodium excretion (r = 0.65, P less than 0.005). Another group (n = 7) underwent the same two-step procedure; after the second volume expansion, high-dose atriopeptin III infusion (0.4 microgram.kg-1.min-1 did not further increase fractional excretion of sodium (3.17 +/- 0.27 to 2.50 + 0.39%, P = NS). In another group (n = 9 rats), the same dose of atriopeptin III was started before any blood volume expansion. After the resulting hypotension was corrected by restoration of blood volume, an additional 1.5% body weight blood volume expansion did not further augment sodium excretion. We conclude that the diuresis and natriuresis, which occur in response to volume expansion without hemodilution, rise and fall in parallel with immunoreactive ANF in the plasma, and that ANF and acute blood volume expansion act on the kidney through a similar, saturable mechanism.