Effect of sodium fluoride on concentrating and diluting ability in the rat.

Mechanisms for the concentrating defect produced by fluoride were examined in the rat. Free-water clearance at all levels of delivery was normal after 5 days of chronic fluoride administration in the hereditary hypothalamic diabetes insipidus rat. In the Sprague-Dawley rats, during moderate fluoride administration (120 micronmol/kg per day), urine osmolality and cyclic AMP excretion decreased and urine volume increased, but after exogenous vasopressin, volume decreased and osmolality and cyclic AMP increased appropriately. During larger daily doses of fluoride (240 micronmol/kg per day) urinary osmolality and cyclic AMP decreased and volume increased, which was similar to the changes seen during lower fluoride dosages, but these parameters did not change after exogenous vasopressin. These data suggest that ascending limb chloride reabsorption is unaltered by fluoride administration; in the presence of sufficient fluoride, collecting tubular cells apparently do not generate cyclic AMP or increase permeability appropriately in response to vasopressin. The postulated defect is felt to be due to either a decrease in ATP availability or to a direct inhibitory effect of fluoride on the vasopressin-dependent cyclic AMP generating system.