[Proceedings: Correlations between blood pressure, body sodium/blood volume state and plasma renin in patients with terminal kidney insufficiency].

Plasma renin activity was found to correlate inversely with exchangeable sodium or blood volume in both normotensive and hypertensive hemodialysis patients. However, in the hypertensive patients mean circulating renin for any given sodium/volume state was markedly higher than in normotensive patients or normal subjects. Blood pressure correlated more closely with the products of circulating renin and exchangeable sodium (r = 0.55; p less than 0.001) or blood volume (r = 0.43; p less than 0.001) than with the individual components (r less than or equal to 0.39); multiple regression analysis including duration of previous hypertension as a second independent variable further improved these correlations (r = 0.66 and r = 0.63 respectively). This suggests that the sodium/volume state, circulating renin and vascular changes resulting from previous hypertension may be important complementary determinants of blood pressure in hemodialysis patients.