Synchronization in renal microcirculation unveiled with high-resolution blood flow imaging.

Internephron interaction is fundamental for kidney function. Earlier studies have shown that nephrons signal to each other, synchronize over short distances, and potentially form large synchronized clusters. Such clusters would play an important role in renal autoregulation, but due to the technological limitations, their presence is yet to be confirmed.

Time-varying properties of renal autoregulatory mechanisms.

In order to assess the possible time-varying properties of renal autoregulation, time-frequency and time-scaling methods were applied to renal blood flow under broad-band forced arterial blood pressure fluctuations and single-nephron renal blood flow with spontaneous oscillations obtained from normotensive (Sprague-Dawley, Wistar, and Long-Evans) rats, and spontaneously hypertensive rats. Time-frequency analyses of normotensive and hypertensive blood flow data obtained from either the whole kidney or the single-nephron show that indeed both the myogenic and tubuloglomerular feedback (TGF) mechanisms have time-varying characteristics. Furthermore, we utilized the Renyi entropy to measure the complexity of blood-flow dynamics in the time-frequency plane in an effort to discern differences between normotensive and hypertensive recordings.