Chapter Seven: The Total Body Water and The Plasma Sodium Concentration

Chapter Seven: The Total Body Water and The Plasma Sodium Concentration

References

Sands JM, Blount MA and Klein JD. Regulation of Renal Urea Transport by Vasopressin. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116377/

In this invited piece, Sands and colleagues explain that although urea is permeable across membranes, this is slow, thus urea transporters in the kidney, under control of vasopressin, are needed to facilitate transport and create the medullary gradient. 

Text book using 20% of extracellular compartment being in the intravascular compartment. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ap2/chapter/body-fluids-and-fluid-compartments-no-content/

another one: https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Book%3A_Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless)/25%3A_Body_Fluids_and_Acid-Base_Balance/25.2%3A_Body_Fluids/25.2B%3A_Fluid_Compartments

The chapter I wrote where I went through the math in figure 7-3. It was a major revelation to me: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17BM1xihvlztuQlU8GVNhEDoPLzr6GounHYZAtVUkLvw/edit?usp=sharing

Association Between ICU-Acquired Hypernatremia and In-Hospital Mortality https://journals.lww.com/ccejournal/fulltext/2020/12000/association_between_icu_acquired_hypernatremia_and.26.aspx

Rate of Correction of Hypernatremia and Health Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30948456/

Edelman IS, Leibman J, O’Meara MP and Birkenfeld LW. Interrelations between serum sodium concentration, serum osmolarity and total exchangeable sodium, total exchangeable potassium and total body water. JCI 1958. This classic paper calculates the total body exchangeable sodium and potassium and establishes the relationship between these. Understanding this painstacking work helps understand the effect of supplementing potassium in the setting of hyponatremia. 

https://dm5migu4zj3pb.cloudfront.net/manuscripts/103000/103712/cache/103712.1-20201218131357-covered-e0fd13ba177f913fd3156f593ead4cfd.pdf

Edelman is the Root of Almost All Good in Nephrology https://www.renalfellow.org/2014/11/20/edelman-is-root-of-almost-all-good-in/

Jens Titze and his team published a pair of articles that shocked those interested in salt and water in JCI in 2017. 

High Salt intake reprioritizes osmolyte and energy metabolism for body fluid conservation https://www.jci.org/articles/view/88532

Increased salt consumption induces body water conservation and decreases fluid intake https://www.jci.org/articles/view/88530

in this exciting exploration of the basic assumptions that we hold true regarding salt and water (and staring Russian cosmonauts and an incredible controlled simulation of salt and water intake), Titze shows that high sodium intake does not simply drive water consumption (as we usually teach) but instead leads to a complex hormonal and metabolic response (even with diurnal variation!) and results in body water conservation and decreased water consumption. 

And accompanying editorial from Mark Zeidel: salt and water, not so simple. https://www.jci.org/articles/view/94004

In addition, Titze and others have done interesting work on sodium deposition in tissues where it may also be a source for systemic inflammation.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28154199/

Jens Titze talking about salt, water, thirsting a TEDx talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQQPBmnIuCY

A discussion/debate of the overfill vs. underfill theory of edema in the nephrotic syndrome (hint- overfill theory triumphs) would be incomplete without a reference to congenital analbuminemia. This reference from Frontiers in Genetics explores the diagnosis, phenotype and molecular genetics and reveal that patients tend to have only mild edema but severe hyperlipidemia. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478806/

The finding that proteinuria can directly lead to sodium retention based on a study when puromycin aminoglycoside induced proteinuria of one kidney lead to sodium retention by that kidney which was localized to the distal nephron. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC436841/?page=9

Plasmin may be the culprit at the level of the epithelial sodium channel based on Tom Kleyman’s work: https://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/20/2/233

Amiloride may help! (stay tuned for amiloride in a future episode) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016639/

An old favorite of JC’s from the Kidney International feature which debates the cause of edema in the nephrotic syndrome.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0085253815583075

Under protest, we hobbled through a discussion of the Gibbs Donnan affect even encouraged by one of Amy’s fellows based on this article from QJM: https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/101/10/827/1520972 suggesting that our understanding of the role of hyponatremia in fractures might be all wrong- it could be related to hypoalbuminemia.

Outline

The Total Body Water and The Plasma Sodium Concentration

  • Three compartments

  • Regulation of intracellular volume achieved in part by regulation of plasma osmolality

  • Plasma volume is sodium balance

  • Exchange of water between cellular and extracellular fluids

    • Water moves through cell membranes

    • All body fluids are in osmotic equilibrium

    • Intracellular volume is water balance (osmolality)

      • Brownian motion

        • Solutes slow movement of particles

        • Water moves to area of higher osmolality until hydrostatic pressure opposes osmotic pressure

      • Colligative properties

      • Ineffective osmole

      • Primary effective osmole in extrace3llular compartment is sodium

      • Primary effective osmole of the intracellular compartment is potassium

        • Footnote about exchangeable sodium and potassium

        • Figure 7-3 and Table 7-1 Nice demonstration of the effect of adding Na or water to the two compartment model.

          • Shows why you need to use TBW not extracellular water in calculations about sodium.

          • Go through all three examples (salt, water, NS)

          • In each of the examples, the ECC is increased, but the Na increases, decreases and remains the same, emphasizing how [Na] is a concentration not an assessment of volume.

      • Relation of Plasma Sodium Concentration to Osmolality

        • NaCl is 75% dissociated

        • 93% of plasma is made of water

          • Balance is fat and protein

        • Combine those two and you get osm of Na salts = 1.88 x Na

        • The remaining 17 mOsm/kg (0.12 x 140) is covered by K, Mg, Ca!

        • POsm = 2x Na + glucose/18 + BUN/2.8

          • But urea is ineffective

          • And glucose only contributes a little bit

          • So really it is 2xNa

      • The determinants of plasma sodium

        • Combining eq 7-4

          • Effective POsm = 2 x pNa

        • With eq 7-6

          • Effect Osm = (2 x Nae + 2 x Ke)/TBW

        • Gets you eq 7-6

          • Plasma Na = Nae + Ke/TBW

        • Talks about diarrhea causing loss of extracellular potassium leading to movement of sodium into the cells in exchange for potassium. No references.

        • Says osmolality is due to changes in water

          • Can’t get hypernatremia from gain in potassium because you die of hyperkalemia first.

  • Exchange of water between plasma and interstitial fluid

    • Capillaries and post cap venules

    • Capillary is permeable to sodium and glucose these substances do not behave as effective osmoles.

    • Only plasma proteins are effective osmoles

      • Osmotic pressure generated by the plasma proteins is plasma on oncotic pressure

      • Oncotic pressure balanced by plasma hydraulic pressure

      • The balance of these pressures, along with the oncotic and hydraulic pressure of the interstitium is expressed as part of Starlings law

      • After defining the variables rose states, “cap hemodynamics are not uniform, as both open and closed capillaries may be present.” What is an open or closed capillary?

        • Muscle have lower cap pressure, cap wall is impermeable to proteins, negative interstitial pressure due to lymph drainage.

          • Net filtration pressure is 0.3 mmHg

          • Filtration is reversed in the post- capillary venules here venule hydrai\ulic pressure is very low.

        • Alveoli have lower cap hydraulic pressure, lower trans cap oncotic pressure due to higher permeability of proteins,

          • Net filtration pressure is 2 mmHg

          • Low plasma oncotic pressure means this gradient is resistant to changes in albumin

        • Glomerular

          • Much higher net filtration from lower pre-cap resistance

          • Net of 6 mmHg

    • Cap hydraulic Pressure and autoregulation

      • Cap hydraulic pressure due to three factors

        • Arterial pressure

        • Resistance at the precap sphincter

          • Autoregulation

          • Prevents hypertension from causing edema

        • Postcap resistance in venules and veins

          • Little control

    • Plasma oncotic pressure

      • Hoff’s low states oncotic proessure = solute concentration X gas constant X temp in Kelvin

        • Since the last two are constants, oncotic pressure changes linearly with solute concentration

        • However that does not occur!!!!

        • Oncotic pressure from plasma proteins is greater than predicted due to Gibbs Donnan equilibrium.

        • Increases plasma oncotic pressure from 0.9 to 1.3 mmosmol/Kg which represents change from 17.4 to 25-26 mmHg

        • Other poorly understood factors contribute to this discrepancy between predicted and actual values for the oncotic pressure produced by the plasma proteins.

    • Safety factors

      • Factors that prevent small changes from causing big filtration

        • Lymphatic flow

        • Movement of fluid decreases interstitial oncotic pressure

        • Increased fluid increases interstitial hydraulic pressure

      • Talks about under fill and overfill theory of nephrotic syndrome