CHARACTERIZATION OF RENAL BLOOD FLOW REGULATION BASED ON WAVELET COEFFICIENTS

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the possibility of revealing new characteristic features of renal blood flow autoregulation in healthy and pathological states through the application of discrete wavelet transforms to experimental time series for normotensive and hypertensive rats. A reduction in the variability of the wavelet coefficients in hypertension is observed at both the microscopic level of the blood flow in efferent arterioles of individual nephrons and at the macroscopic level of the blood pressure in the main arteries.

The reduction is manifest in both of the main frequency domains of nephron autoregulation and is likely to reflect a reduced flexibility of the cardiovascular system during hypertension.