Relationship of plasma concentrations of human atrial natriuretic peptide to renal function and blood pressure in patients with progressive chronic renal failure.

Recent experimental and clinical findings indicate that immunoreactive human Atrial Natriuretic Peptide (alpha-hANP) is involved in the regulation of blood volume and arterial blood pressure (BP). Whereas the potential regulatory role of alpha-hANP in acute changes of extracellular fluid volume (ECFV) and in the modulation of BP has been demonstrated in various studies, their involvement in the chronic maintenance of sodium and water homeostasis is still equivocal. Moreover the role of alpha-hANP is of particular interest in chronic renal failure, since in this pathological condition increased sodium and water retention plays a major pathogenetic role in the development of hypertension and altered secretion and/or metabolism of alpha-hANP may contribute to fluid volume and BP regulation. To evaluate the relationship between the degree of renal insufficiency, BP and circulating alpha hANP we determined plasma alpha-hANP concentrations in 16 nondialyzed patients with progressive chronic renal failure (CRF) of various degree. Serum creatinine concentrations ranged from 127 to 1187 (435 +/- 76) mumol/l, systolic BP from 135 to 200 (158 +/- 4) and diastolic BP from 80 to 110 (94 +/- 2) mm Hg respectively. Plasma alpha-hANP concentrations ranged from 49 to 753 with a mean of 228 +/- 42 pg/ml which was thus significantly higher as compared to 90.0 +/- 16.2 pg/ml found in healthy volunteers (p less than 0.05). A highly significant linear correlation between plasma alpha-hANP and serum creatinine concentrations (r = 0.92) was observed; a weaker correlation was found between mean arterial pressure and alpha-hANP (r = 0.66) and serum creatinine concentration (r = 0.59), respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)