Drinking to intracerebroventricularly infused angiotensin II, III, and IV in the SHR

Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) revealed exaggerated water consumption to the intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusion of angiotensin II (AII), and angiotensin III (AIII), as compared with Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and Sprague-Dawley (SD) normotensive rat strains, in agreement with an earlier report (30) that employed ICV bolus injections of AII and AIII. However, the ICV infusion of AII(3-8) (AIV) did not yield reliable drinking. A second hypothesis that the infusion of AII and AIII would yield equivalent drinking within members of each strain, as previously observed with bolus ICV injections in SD rats, was not confirmed. In contrast, ICV infusion of AII yielded greater water intake than AIII in members of each strain tested. These results suggest that the slow infusion of these ligands allowed endogenous aminopeptidases to adequately keep pace with the degradation of these peptides in contrast with bolus injections that could temporarily saturate the available aminopeptidases thus extending the half-life of the ligand.