Renal autoregulation: perspectives from whole kidney and single nephron studies

The phenomenon of renal autoregulation is often thought to relate only to the manner in which the kidney responds to changes in arterial pressure. This review presents a more comprehensive description of the process based on the intrinsic renal vascular responses to changes in arterial pressure, venous pressure, ureteral pressure, and plasma colloid osmotic pressure. Regulation of glomerular filtration rate (GFR), or some function thereof, is the feature most consistently observed. More specifically, in response to external manipulations that change GFR, autonomous changes in renal vascular resistance tend to return GFR back towards normal. The bulk of the evidence suggests that the requisite renal vascular resistance alterations occur predominately at preglomerular segments. Most of the whole kidney autoregulatory responses can be explained on the basis of the distal tubule-glomerular feedback hypothesis, thought to be mediated by the macula densa-juxtaglomerular complex, which states that increases in distal volume delivery lead to increases in afferent arteriolar resistance while reduced distal delivery leads to afferent arteriolar dilation. Micropuncture data have demonstrated that interruption of distal volume delivery prevents single nephrons from autoregulating GFR and glomerular pressure. Also, single nephron glomerular filtration rate (SNGFR) based on proximal collections is higher than SNGFR measured by distal collections or with an indicator-dilution technique. Studies utilized direct microperfusion of the distal nephron from a late proximal tubule site have demonstrated that SNGFR and glomerular pressure decrease in response to increases in distal nephron perfusion rate. Although experiments in rats have been interpreted as indicating that distal chloride concentration and/or reabsorption most likely mediate the feedback responses, recent studies in dogs have demonstrated that feedback responses can be consistently obtained with nonelectrolyte perfusion solutions. These latter studies suggest that the feedback response may be sensitive to some function of total solute delivery or concentration. At present, there is no clear understanding of the intracellular events that link the compositional alterations occurring within the early distal tubule to the final effector system.