ON THE MECHANISMS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE OF ONE-KIDNEY, ONE-CLIP HYPERTENSION

Dr. Skeggs demonstrated the lack of renin dependence in 1-kidney, 1-clip hypertension and elucidated some of the differences between that and Dr. Goldblatt's classic 2-kidney, 1-clip model of hypertension. Studies of these two different types of hypertension have led research in many new directions and helped to reveal the role of the renin-angiotensin system in hypertension and that system's interaction with sodium-induced vasodilation in both animals and humans. More recent research has investigated the processes behind essential hypertension and I present here the proposal that, due to nephron heterogeneity, essential hypertension in humans is parallel in its pathophysiologic processes to Goldblatt hypertension.