Mineralocorticoid Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease Induced in Hypophysectomized Rats

Abstract

Reports in the literature to the contrary, hypertensive cardiovascular disease proved to be readily induced by desoxycorticosterone in hypophysectomized rats sensitized to steroid action by partial nephreetomy and high NaCl intake. In the absence of the pituitary, however, hypertension was somewhat slower in onset and progress. Although hypophysectomized animals were able to develop hypertension as severely as did intact animals, they were not, as judged by their better survival and less evident cardiorenal vascular lesions, as severely injured thereby. Contrasted with their exuberant development in hypertensive intact animals, renal lesions in hypertensive hypophysectomized animals were rare. Necrotizing arteritis in the heart was seen in about half of the hypox animals, and periarteritis nodosa of pancreatic and mesenteric arteries was more widespread and severe than in similarly treated intact animals which had, however, died earlier. Steroid treated animals bearing pituitary autotransplants beneath the renal capsule, developed more severe and widespread cardio-renal lesions than did similarly treated hypophysectomized animals, but incidence and severity of periarteritis nodosa in splanchnic arteries was about the same in each. The ingestion of sodium chloride caused "salt hypertension" in some of the pituitary-bearing controls, but not in either hypophysectomized or autotransplant-bearing controls.