Kidney diseases
Many renal diseases cause hypertension. For example, inflammatory conditions like glomerulonephritis-pyelonephritis. There are also diabetes complications, as in diabetic nephropathy, congenital diseases like polycystic kidney disease, and vascular diseases such as renal artery stenosis.
These diseases cause hypertension by two mechanisms:
- They may cause renal failure, which reduces the urine output and leads to sodium and water retention, which causes hypertension.
- Renal artery stenosis reduces the blood supply to the kidneys and causes renal ischemia, leading to an over-secretion of a renal hormone called renin that stimulates the production of angiotensin II and causes vasoconstriction and hypertension.
