The place of renin in the mechanism of hypertension in chronic renal disease.

The history of the development of ideas on the cause of renal hypertension is first discussed. Growth of knowledge of renin and angiotensin from 1898 to the present is shown to depend upon better and more specific assays for each part of the system, which has enabled knowledge of the role of the renin-angiotensin system in various forms of hypertension to be assessed accurately. The difficulties of assessing varying levels in relation to their biological effect is stressed and the importance of the use of blockers of both renin and angiotensin is shown to mark a very large advance in the study of various forms of renal hypertension where there is a complicated relationship, still ill-defined, between renin, angiotensin, sodium and body fluid volumes.