Abstract :
[en] The saga of the Renin and Angiotensin: historical perspectives: In 1898, a Finnish physiologist, Robert Tigerstedt and his Swedish assistant, Per Bergman, discover that extracts of renal cortex in saline solution induce a hypertensive response when they are injected in animals. They call this compound Renin. These researchers as well as the scientific world will ignore the real scope of this discovery towards understanding of hypertension for several decades.
Between the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, researchers such as Heinrich Ewald Hering (1866-1948) and the Belgian Corneille Heymans (1892-1968) will contribute to identify the mechanisms of neural hypertension, especially from experiences including the section of the regulators nerves of the vasomotor reflexes in animals. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be awarded to Heymans in 1938 for “the discovery of the role played by the aortic sinuses in the regulation of respiration".
In the USA, John Loesch first, then Harry Goldblatt and his collaborators, develop an experimental hypertension model that will pave the way to the understanfing of hypertension. They show that a reduction in renal blood perfusion is accompanied by a permanent hypertension in dogs. This reproducible experimental technique, will allow to turn to other researchers of notables advanced on the endocrine mechanisms of hypertension.
In 1940, two teams will demonstrate ,independently ,hypertension induced by ischemia of the renal artery depends on a unique humoral compound. In Argentina, the Nobel Prize for medicine or Physiology, Bernardo Houssay builds a team of researchers to elucidate the model of Goldblatt. This team is integrated by Eduardo Braun Menéndez, Juan Carlos Fasciolo, Luis Federico Leloir, Juan Mauricio Munoz and Alberto C Taquini. In the blood of ischemic kidney, they demonstrate the existence of a vasoactive substance different of Renin that they called hypertensine. In the USA, Irving Page and his collaborators come to similar conclusions, and they call their substance it angiotonin. Finally, in 1959 the two groups will reach a gentlemen agreement and they will merge the two appelations to keep the name of angiotensin.
Like a Nordic saga, the discoveries regarding the Renin and angiotensin can be browsed as a real scientific adventure. This scientific saga, like any legend, is punctuated by the success but also failures of leading researchers, that we recall in this historic presentation.
