Objective: To investigate a model of experimental hypertension that exhibits severe hypertrophy of small blood vessels but in which deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA) and salt are absent: the one-kidney, one clip model of Goldblatt renovascular hypertension, which is non-renin-dependent, and compare it with the renin-dependent two-kidney, one clip Goldblatt hypertensive rat, in which additionally vascular hypertrophy is less severe.
Methods: Endothelin-1 gene expression in blood vessels and in the heart was examined by Northern blot analysis.
Results: After 2 or 4 weeks of application of the silver clip to unilaterally nephrectomized rats, the aorta and mesenteric arteries exhibited a significant increase in the intensity of the 2.3 kb band corresponding to hybridization with endothelin-1 messenger RNA (mRNA) in comparison with results obtained in control unilaterally nephrectomized rats. No increase was noted in the blood vessels of the two-kidney, one clip hypertensive rat at 2 or 4 weeks, but significant increases were found at 8 weeks in aorta, but not in mesenteric arteries. Cardiac abundance of endothelin-1 mRNA was also increased in ventricles and in the left atria of one-kidney, one clip hypertensive rats, but only in the late phase (at 8 weeks) in two-kidney, one clip hypertensive rats.
Conclusion: Because one-kidney, one clip hypertensive rats presented severe vascular hypertrophy whereas two-kidney, one clip hypertensive rats only did so in the late phase of hypertension, these results lend further support to there being a relationship between vascular hypertrophy and endothelin-1 vascular overexpression in experimental models of hypertension. They also demonstrate that enhancement of the expression of endothelin-1 gene in blood vessels and in the heart of hypertensive rats may occur in the absence of exposure to DOCA and salt, and that endothelin-1 gene overexpression in experimental hypertension occurs early in non-renin-dependent, volume-expanded models such as the one-kidney, one clip or the DOCA-salt hypertensive rat, but only in the progressively non-renin-dependent late phase of the initially renin-dependent volume-contracted two-kidney, one clip hypertensive rat.