Brain-hypertension Link

The kidneys are considered the primary regulators of blood pressure, removing excess water and salt from the blood and producing pressure-regulating factors. But studies in rats have revealed that a high salt diet, which raises blood pressure, also leads to the activation of the brain’s resident immune cells – microglia (coloured purple in this video) – which in turn control neurons producing vasopressin (a pressure regulating hormone). In response to high salt, the microglia gobble up, or prune, parts of astrocyte cells (the orange and green fragments), which regulate the vasopressin neurons, leading to increased activity of the latter. Importantly, stopping this microglia-mediated pruning, reduced salt-induced hypertension in rats, suggesting, if a similar pathway acts in humans, the neurons could be novel targets for blood pressure medications. Especially promising targets, in fact, given that a third of hypertensive patients don’t respond to standard medications targeting the kidneys and blood vessels.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Video from work by Ning Gu et al, Masha Prager-Khoutorsky lab
• Department of Physiology, McIntyre Medical Sciences Building, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Neuron, August 2025