Mechanisms of spontaneous hypertension in rats

Studies on the Kyoto (SHR) and the New Zealand (GHR) strains of genetically predisposed hypertensive rats have shown that in the SHR neurogenic influences, primarily of higher central origin, play an important role in the initiation of hypertension. Studies on human essential hypertension indicate that this may also be true for man, although it is far from being the sole explanation. Brookhaven hypertension-prone rats illustrate the interaction between genetic and exogenous factors since they require an overload of salt for the development of high blood pressure. The Milan hypertensive rats (MHS), on the other hand, illustrate a genetic deviation of renal function with imbalance between glomerular filtration and tubular resorption of sodium and water, which may simulate at least some variants of the relatively mild forms of low renin hypertension in man. Structural adaptive vascular changes have been demonstrated in SHR and GHR and in nongenetic renal hypertension in rats, and there are several indications of their presence in MHS. Thus, regardless of the nature of the initiating factors, these secondary but rapidly established changes occur and greatly contribute to the maintenance and acceleration of the hypertensive state. The vascular changes can even be regarded as a common denominator for chronic hypertension and serve as an element which, in fact, reinforces the initiating mechanisms. The progress of the vascular changes can be interfered with by reducing the pressure load. Lowering the blood pressure by pharmacologic treatment is most effective when the treatment is initiated as such an early age when the cardiovascular structural adaptation is still minimal. Treatment in later phases is less successful since the adaptive increases in cardiac and vessel wall thickness can then no longer be fully normalized by pressure reduction because of increased amounts of collagen and other connective tissue elements in the vessel wall, which regress poorly. An increased wall thickness of the resistance vessels implies a vascular hyperreactivity to constricting influences which, in turn, rapidly brings the blood pressure back to supranormal levels as soon as therapy is stopped.