Effects of lisinopril on the structure of renal arterioles.

We investigated the effect of long-term administration of the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor lisinopril on renal arterioles in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) using a morphometric method and vascular cast technique. Rats were treated with lisinopril beginning at 4 weeks of age. At 15 weeks of age, the kidney vessels were fixed when maximally relaxed. Resin was perfused into the right kidney to make a cast of the renal vasculature. The opposite kidney was used for the morphometric study to evaluate structural changes of the vascular wall. The vascular cast study demonstrated a significant reduction in the lumen diameter of the afferent but not the efferent arterioles in SHR compared with those in WKY. In lisinopril-treated rats, the afferent arteriolar lumen diameters were significantly larger than those of the respective control groups in both strains. However, treatment did not affect the lumen diameter of efferent arterioles in either strain. The morphometric study revealed that the cross-sectional area of afferent arteriolar media was significantly smaller in SHR than WKY, suggesting that the impaired growth of the afferent arteriolar media was involved in the narrowed afferent arteriolar lumen in SHR. The presence of significantly smaller media-lumen ratio, greater media cross-sectional area, and larger internal as well as external diameters of the afferent arterioles in treated SHR than in untreated rats suggested that lisinopril treatment normalizes the structure of the afferent arterioles in SHR by vascular reverse remodeling and by inducing media growth.