EXPERIMENTALLY-INDUCED WARM RENAL ISCHEMIA INDUCES CORTICAL ACCUMULATION OF HYALURONAN IN THE KIDNEY

An accumulation of the connective tissue component, hyaluronan (HA), i s known to occur in both syngeneic and allogeneic kidney grafts during the early postoperative period. The a presence of HA in the interstit ial tissue of the grafts is paralleled by an increased water content, suggesting a role for HA in the development of the transplantation ede ma, In the pre-sent work, the kidney content and distribution of HA wa s studied in a model of warn? renal ischemia In the rat to investigate whether renal ischemia is associated with HA accumulation. Seventy-tw o hours after a period of warm renal ischemia (30 or 60 min) significa ntly higher amounts of HA were observed in the left kidney that had be an exposed to ischemia, than in the right, healthy kidney. The most pr onounced increase was found to occur in the cortex (20 to 40 times), a structure where there normally is almost no presence of HA. In additi on, there was a correlation between the relative: water content of the kidney and the amount of HA possible to extract from the tissue. The renal accumulation of HA and water was prevented by daily intravenous administration of hualuronidase. We conclude that renal ischemia induc es an accumulation of HA that may increase the risk for the developmen t of interstitial edema, a situation that may be circumvented by hyalu ronidase treatment.