On the role of renin in one-kidney, one-clip hypertension.

It is known that the renin angiotension system as it is usually understood is not the mediator of experimental one-kidney, one-clip (1K,1C) hypertension in animals. There is also ample evidence that the blood pressure of dogs and rabbits with this form of hypertension can be lowered by immunization with hog renin, which implies that renin is the mediator. In an effort to resolve this contradiction, we searched for a second hypertensive substance which we thought may have been present in the crude hog kidney extracts that had been used to immunize the hypertensive animals.

Incorporation of labeled renin into the tissues of the rabbit.

Our previous work has shown that pure hog renin, when injected into one-kidney, one-clip hypertensive rabbits elicits not only antirenin antibodies but also antibodies to what appears to be an altered form of renin (antigen M). Antiantigen M stains the cytoplasm of smooth muscle cells and certain other cells in tissues of normal and hypertensive rabbits. We now report studies in which pure 125I hog and rabbit renin have been infused into hypertensive rabbits for seven-day periods and the tissues subsequently examined for nondegraded radioactive components.