{"doi":"10.1152/ajpregu.00341.2020","title":"Preserved glycemic control and baroreflex efficacy in young adult hypertensive female obese Zucker rats","abstract":"Obese Zucker rats (OZRs) develop hypertension and hyperinsulinemia by 3 mo of age. Male OZRs also have diminished baroreflex-mediated activation of nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) and bradycardia, which are improved by correcting their hyperglycemia. Conversely, 3-mo-old female OZRs and lean Zucker rats (LZRs) have equivalent baroreflex-mediated bradycardia that is impaired in 6-mo-old OZRs. We hypothesized that 3-mo-old female OZRs maintain NTS activation and baroreflexes coincident with glycemic control. We also hypothesized that 6-mo-old female OZRs develop impaired baroreflexes with hyperglycemia and diminished NTS activation. In 12- to 16-wk-old females, sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) and arterial pressure (AP) were higher in OZRs than LZRs. However, baroreflex-mediated inhibition of SNA and bradycardia were equivalent in female OZRs and LZRs. Unlike deficits in male OZRs, female OZRs and LZRs had no differences in phenylephrine-induced c-Fos expression in NTS or decreases in SNA and AP evoked by glutamate into NTS. Compared with hyperglycemia in male OZRs (217.9 ± 34.4 mg/dL), female OZRs had normal fed blood glucose levels (108.2 ± 1.6 mg/dL in LZRs and 113.6 ± 3.5 mg/dL in OZRs) with emerging glucose intolerance. Conscious 24- to 27-wk-old female OZRs had impaired baroreflex-mediated bradycardia, but fed blood glucose was modestly elevated (124.2 ± 5.2 mg/dL) and phenylephrine-induced c-Fos expression in NTS was comparable to LZRs. These data suggest that better glycemic control in 3-mo-old female OZRs prevents diminished NTS activation and baroreflexes, supporting the notion that hyperglycemia impairs these responses in male OZRs. However, 6-mo-old female OZRs had impaired baroreflex efficacy without diminished NTS activation or pronounced hyperglycemia, suggesting baroreflex deficits develop by different mechanisms in female and male OZRs.","journal":"American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology","year":2021,"id":206671,"datarank":0.26876392038420827,"base_score":1.791759469228055,"endowment":1.791759469228055,"self_citation_contribution":0.26876392038420827,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.26876392038420827,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9478,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":791095,"name":"Paromita Das‐Earl","orcid":"0009-0000-2523-9980","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":791096,"name":"Ann M. Schreihofer","orcid":"0000-0003-0069-2847","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":439928,"name":"Parul Chaudhary","orcid":"0000-0002-5181-6515","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":66,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:41.571653Z","pmid":"33978481","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}