Dynamic modeling of renal blood flow in Dahl hypertensive and normotensive rats

A method is proposed in this paper which allows characterization of renal autoregulatory dynamics and efficiency using quantitative mathematical methods. Based on data from rat experiments, where arterial blood pressure and renal blood flow are measured, a quantitative model for renal blood flow dynamics is constructed. The mathematical structure for the dynamics is chosen as a "grey-box model," i.e. the model structure is inspired from physiology, but the actual parameters is found by numerical methods. Based on a number of experiments, features are extracted from the estimated parameters, which describe myogenic responses and tubuloglomerular feedback responses separately. The method is applied to data from normo- and hypertensive Dahl rats, and a discriminator that separates data from normotensive Dahl R rats and hypertensive Dahl S rats is constructed.