Nocturnal food-related hyperdipsia in the adult spontaneously hypertensive rat

Male adult spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) ate the same but drank more and had a higher water to food ratio (W:F) than did Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats in 24-hr when they had continuous access to standard laboratory pellets and tap water. When rats ate in the day phase of a 12:12 light/dark cycle after 24-hr food deprivation, SHR rats ate and drank the same as did WKY rats in a 60-min test. When the same rats ate at night after 24-hr food deprivation, however, SHR rats were hyperdipsic: They ate the same as did WKY rats, but SHR rats drank more and had a higher W:F. This relative hyperdipsia reflected the increased ability of ingestion of food to stimulate drinking in SHR, because when food was absent for a 60-min test at night SHR drank the same as did WKY rats. Three dipsogens which are candidate components for eating-elicited drinking in the rat, cellular dehydration, histamine and angiotensin II, elicited drinking differentially in SHR and WKY rats: SHR drank more than did WKY rats in response to (1) cellular dehydration produced by IP hypertonic saline, (2) large doses of SC histamine, and (3) SC angiotensin II. These results demonstrate that SHR exhibit a nocturnal food-related hyperdipsia which may reflect differential sensitivity to stimuli important for eating-elicited drinking such as increased osmolality and endogenous histamine or angiotensin.