Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 28, 2016; 22(48): 10545-10556
Published online Dec 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i48.10545
Effects of asymmetric dimethylarginine on renal arteries in portal hypertension and cirrhosis
Gloria Segarra, Belén Cortina, María Dolores Mauricio, Susana Novella, Paloma Lluch, Javier Navarrete-Navarro, Inmaculada Noguera, Pascual Medina
Gloria Segarra, Belén Cortina, María Dolores Mauricio, Susana Novella, Javier Navarrete-Navarro, Inmaculada Noguera, Pascual Medina, Department of Physiology, University of Valencia and Institute of Health Research INCLIVA, Hospital Clínico Universitario Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Paloma Lluch, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Institute of Health Research INCLIVA, Hospital Clínico Universitario Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Author contributions: Segarra G, Cortina B and Medina P designed and supervised the study; Segarra G, Cortina B, Mauricio MD, Novella S, Navarrete-Navarro J and Noguera I collected samples and performed the experiments; Segarra G, Cortina B, Mauricio MD, Novella S, Lluch P, Noguera I and Medina P acquired and analyzed the data; all authors drafted the article, made critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript and approved the final version of the article for publication.
Supported by Consellería de Sanidad of the Generalitat Valenciana, No. AP-052/08.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the University of Valencia Institutional Ethics Committee.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All protocols were approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee at the University of Valencia (No. UV20121124), and conformed to the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals published in Directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interests.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Pascual Medina, PhD, Department of Physiology, University of Valencia and Institute of Health Research INCLIVA, Hospital Clínico Universitario Valencia, Avenida Blasco Ibáñez 15, 46010 Valencia, Spain. pascual.medina@uv.es
Telephone: +34-96-3864983 Fax: +34-96-3864642
Received: July 27, 2016
Peer-review started: July 30, 2016
First decision: August 29, 2016
Revised: September 17, 2016
Accepted: October 10, 2016
Article in press: October 10, 2016
Published online: December 28, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Cirrhosis is associated with renal dysfunction and renal vasoconstriction. This constriction leads to decreased renal blood flow and glomerular filtration. Decreased nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability is involved in these effects. Although plasma levels of asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), an endogenous inhibitor of NO synthase, are increased in cirrhosis, the effects of ADMA on renal arteries under this pathological condition are unknown. Therefore, the present work studied the effects of ADMA on basal- and stimulated-NO release in renal arteries from portal hypertensive and cirrhotic rats and the renal expression and activity of dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase, an enzyme that catabolizes ADMA.