POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY AS CAUSE OF THE SO-CALLED RHEUMATIC HEART LESIONS OF THE ADAPTATION SYNDROME*

Abstract

IN THE course of experiments designed to study the relationship of diet and hypertension, various techniques of inducing hypertension in rats were used including Selye’s method which he describes in his communication on pathogenetical correlations between periarteritis nodosa, renal hypertension and rheumatic lesions (Selye and Pentz, 1943). This method consists of overdosage with desoxycorticosterone acetate (DCA) with or without high sodium chloride intake in unilaterally nephrectomized rats. Selye found that severe overdosage with DCA reproduces in the rat morphological lesions similar to those seen in periarteritis nodosa, malignant hypertension and rheumatic fever. He concludes that these diseases are, at least partly caused by an abnormal adaptive response of the adrenal cortex and represent diseases of adaptation. In the first series of our experiments when rats with an average weight of 168 grams were treated with DCA overdosage following unilateral nephrectomy, hypertension was only rarely produced, and periarteritis nodosa was not seen.