Heart Failure Augments the Cardiovascular and Renal Effects of Neutral Endopeptidase Inhibition in Rats

We compared the cardiovascular and renal actions of the neutral endopeptidase (NEP) inhibitor, SQ 28,603, in normal rats and in rats with healed myocardial infarcts. The infarcted rats were studied in the conscious state 8 weeks after ligation of the left main coronary artery and 4 h after placement of cardiovascular and renal catheters. Infarct size was 39 ± 1.2% of left ventricle circumference; right ventricle and lung weight to body weight ratios were twice those of normal rats. These postmortem values were shown to be associated with elevated left ventricular end diastolic pressure and high plasma atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) concentration in separate groups of rats. SQ 28,603 at 100 μmol/kg intravenously (i.v.) caused urine volume and sodium excretion to increase by 79 ± 11 (il/min and 8.2 ± 1.4 μEq/min, respectively, 20 min after injection in infarcted rats; these changes were significantly greater than those in normal rats (12 ± 5 μl/min and 1.6 μEq/min, respectively). Thoracic venous pressure decreased by 1.9 ± 0.4 mm Hg 80 min after SQ 28,603 in infarcted rats and by only 0.1 ± 0.1 mm Hg in normal rats (p < 0.05 vs. infarcted rats). SQ 28,603 had no effects on mean arterial pressure (MAP), cardiac output (CO), or glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The observation that NEP inhibition has more pronounced effects in animals with high ambient ANP level than in those with normal ANP is consistent with previous studies in a variety of animal models and supports the concept that NEP inhibition potentiates endogenous ANP.