Protection of Wistar-Furth rats against postischaemic acute renal injury: role for nitric oxide and thromboxane?

Wistar-Furth (WF) rats are a strain of rats usually employed in models of full major histocompatibility complex-mismatched kidney transplantation. These were demonstrated to be resistant to several models of chronic kidney disease. In our study, we investigated their potential resistance to a renal ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury in comparison to another strain, Wistar-Hanover (WH) rats. Anesthetized male WH and WF rats were submitted to I/R by occlusion of the left renal artery, followed by contralateral nephrectomy. Urine, blood and tissue samples were collected at different time-points post-I/R to evaluate renal function, inflammation and tubular injury along with the determination of the NO synthase expression. In post-ischemic WF rats, the renal function was better preserved than in the post-ischemic WH rats. In addition, the post-ischemic WF rats presented less inflammation than the WH rats. These observations were associated with the maintenance of the nNOS expression along with a lower induction level of iNOS expression in WF rats than in WH rats. Moreover, WF rats excreted also a significant smaller amount of TxB2. In conclusion, our results showed that WF rats were more resistant to an I/R injury than WH rats. This could be explain to the differential regulation of intrarenal NOSs expression as well as the TxA2 production.