High NaCl content in food promotes hypervolemia and increased blood pressure (BP). Sensitivity to NaCl was found in 26 % of normotensive human population and in 51 % of hypertensive patients. The aim of the work was to evaluate the impact of renal denervation (RD) on BP in normotensive and hypertensive salt-sensitive rats (Dahl-S and DOCA) consuming a diet enriched with NaCl using meta-analysis. Materials and methods . The meta-analysis included eight studies, which investigated normotensive animals without indicating increased sensitivity to salt, 9 studies which used Dahl-S rats (genetic abnormalities are associated with extensive kidney damage and increased BP with a high-salt diet), and 12 studies which assessed rats with the DOCA model (administration of deoxycorticosterone acetate to normotensive rats causes hypervolemia and increased BP with a high-salt diet). Results . High-salt diet induced severe hypertension in Dahl-S rats even with two kidneys and in DOCA rats with one kidney. According to the results of meta-analysis, total bilateral RD decreased BP by 3–6 % in normotensive, Dahl-S and DOCA rats with two kidneys kept on a high-salt diet. The maximum hypotensive effect of RD (9–12 %) was observed in one-kidney rats with DOCA-salt hypertension. RD did not reduce the “white coat” syndrome in the studied models, but the final conclusion about the effect of RD on BP during emotional stress cannot be made due to the difference in experimental methods and the small number of studies using telemetric BP measurement. Preliminary RD significantly inhibited the development of DOCA-salt, but not Dahl-S hypertension. In normotensive animals and in Dahl-S rats, the RD effect did not depend on the duration of the high-salt diet. The longer DOCA-salt hypertension lasted before RD, the lesser the antihypertensive effect of RD. In Dahl-S rats, sodium excretion decreased during the first 3 weeks after RD, and increased after 4–6 weeks. However, there is no convincing evidence of changes in sodium excretion after RD in rats with DOCA-salt hypertension. Conclusions . With a high-salt diet in normotensive rats and in animals with salt-sensitive hypertension, total RD reduces the baseline BP level. The antihypertensive effect of total RD is greater in DOCA rats compared to Dahl-S rats kept on a high-salt diet.
Kuzmenko et al. (Tue,) studied this question.