The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the most widely studied animal model of high blood pressure. This strain, like many humans with essential hypertension, exhibits insulin resistance and dyslipidemia as well as increased blood pressure. However, the primary mechanisms We found that transferring a piece of chromosome 4 form the normotensive Brown Norway (BN) rat onto the genetic background of the SHR improves insulin sensitivity, lipid levels, and blood pressure (BP) rat onto the genetic background of the SHR improves insulin sensitivity, lipid levels, and blood pressure (BP) in the SHR-chr 4 congenic strain. A deletion in the Cd36 gene that encodes a fatty acid transporter has been found to be responsible for the SHR defects in fatty acid/lipid metabolism associated with this region of chromosome 4. However, molecular and physiologic studies indicate that the mutant form of Cd36 is not likely to be responsible for the effect of this chromosome region on BP and insulin resistance. In the current studies, we propose to derived and phenotype multiple recombinant congenic sublines to genetically dissect the association of insulin resistance and hypertension and further investigate the clustering of multiple cardiovascular in this model.
