Studies elucidating the importance of thymus on the degree of increased blood pressure and vascular disease in renal hypertensive mice. A comparison of the disease in nude and haired littermates.

The degree of round cell infiltration around hypertensively damaged heart arteries in one kidney Goldblatt hypertensive mice is more pronounced in haired mice with normal thymus function than in their nude littermates with genetic aplasia of the thymus. The level of hypertension and the prognoses for the hypertensive mice are, however, not influenced by the presence of thymus and thymus derived T cells. The results give evidence that delayed type immune reactions are involved in the hypertensive vascular disease in mice, but fail to support the assumption that they have pathogenic importance for either the level of hypertension or the prognoses of the one kidney Goldblatt hypertensive mice.