A Subset of Sodium-Sensitive Hypertension

Amajor difficulty in determining the mechanisms responsible for human hypertension is the great variety of systems involved in regulating blood pressure and our tendency to assume that these mechanisms are similar in all hypertensive patients. Even when patients are separated into those whose blood pressure is or is not sensitive to the level of sodium intake, it is often assumed that all "salt-sensitive" hypertensive patients have similar defects. However, an accumulating body of evidence suggests this is not the case, and at least six different mechanisms have been proposed to account for a substantial change in blood pressure when a patient's salt intake is modified (Table 1). This article will review one of these subgroups—non-modulators.