Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2005 Jun;115(6):1458-61.
doi: 10.1172/JCI25417.

Atrial natriuretic peptide: an essential physiological regulator of transvascular fluid, protein transport, and plasma volume

Fitz-Roy E Curry  1
Affiliations
Comment

Atrial natriuretic peptide: an essential physiological regulator of transvascular fluid, protein transport, and plasma volume

Fitz-Roy E Curry. J Clin Invest. 2005 Jun.

Abstract

Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) acts acutely to reduce plasma volume by at least 3 mechanisms: increased renal excretion of salt and water, vasodilation, and increased vascular permeability. Authors of a study in this issue of the JCI performed a knockout of the receptor for ANP in vascular endothelia in order to distinguish the effects of ANP-dependent increases in vascular permeability from those of other endocrine actions of ANP in the regulation of plasma volume. The knockout mice exhibited reduced vascular permeability to plasma protein, resulting in chronically increased plasma volume, arterial hypertension, and cardiac hypertrophy. Renal excretion and vasodilation did not account for these changes. Thus ANP-induced increases in endothelial permeability may be critical to the ability of ANP to lower arterial blood pressure.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Pathways for water and plasma proteins across the endothelial barrier that may be regulated by ANP. (A) Pathways for plasma protein transport across the endothelial permeability barrier that ANP may modulate, including water and plasma transport through the interendothelial cleft at sites where there are infrequent breaks in the junctional strand (see refs. 1, 8) and specialized vesicular pathways and large pore pathways (1). The plasma protein concentration in the interstitial space is normally about 40% of that in the plasma. An ANP-induced increase in vascular permeability decreases the difference in plasma protein osmotic pressure between blood and the interstitial space and favors a reduced plasma volume. Conversely, decreased vascular permeability favors increased plasma volume. The latter mechanism would describe results of experiments where the ANP/BNP receptor, GC-A, on vascular endothelial cells is selectively deleted (6). Similar mechanisms are likely to act even more effectively when the endothelial glycocalyx has a low permeability to plasma proteins and contributes to the formation of a plasma ultrafiltrate with low_plasma protein concentration (and low-protein osmotic pressure). (B) Magnified view of the cleft pathway where the plasma protein concentration in the narrow space is lower than the mixed_plasma protein concentration in the interstitial space. Thus, as shown in C, the difference in plasma protein osmotic pressure across the glycocalyx (πc _ πg) may be significantly larger than the plasma-to-tissue colloid osmotic pressure (πc _ πt), and an ANP-induced increase in the permeability of the glycocalyx would favor a reduced plasma volume. πc, plasma protein osmotic pressure; πg, plasma protein osmotic pressure distal to the glycocalyx; πt, interstitial space protein osmotic pressure; Pc, capillary hydrostatic pressure; Pt, interstitial space hydrostatic pressure.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Michel CC, Curry FE. Microvascular permeability. Physiol. Rev. 1999;79:703–761. - PubMed
    1. Brenner BM, Ballermann BJ, Gunning ME, Zeidel ML. Diverse biological actions of atrial natriuretic peptide. Physiol. Rev. 1990;70:665–699. - PubMed
    1. Baxter GF. The natriuretic peptides. Basic Res. Cardiol. 2004;99:71–75. - PubMed
    1. Tucker VL. Plasma ANP levels and protein extravasation during graded expansion with equilibrated whole blood. Am. J. Physiol. 1996;271:R601–R609. - PubMed
    1. Renkin EM, Tucker VL. Atrial natriuretic peptide as a regulator of transvascular fluid balance. News Physiol. Sci. 1996;11:138–143.

MeSH terms

Substances