Our results show that as renal function deteriorates in glomerulopathy the nocturnal dip in blood pressure is lost, resulting in enhanced urinary sodium and protein excretions during night. These findings are compatible with our proposal that impaired natriuresis during daytime makes nocturnal blood pressure elevated to compensate for diminished natriuresis by pressure natriuresis. We speculate that nocturnal glomerular capillary hypertension contributes, at least in part, to enhanced urinary sodium and protein excretions during night.

No abstract

The 800-ton cosmic-ray spectrograph (MUTRON) has been used to measure the sea-level energy spectrum of cosmic-ray muons arriving from 86" to 90" zenith angles in the momentum region of 100-20000 GeV/c. The measured muon energy spectrum can be interpreted by using a cosmic-ray primary spectrum of (1.80 ~m -~s -' s r -' G e~-' )~-~~~~d~ (E in GeV) and a scaling model incorporating an increasing interaction cross section for meson production in hadron-hadron interaction. The muon charge ratio at energies up to 15 TeV in the same zenith-angle range has been measured. It shows a small enhancement with increasing energy. By combining both results we may conclude that the cosmic-ray primary particle composition stays the same up to about 100 TeV as that obtained by direct measurements in the energy range below 1 TeV.

The renal protective effects of ACE inhibitors have been established by results with animal models of progressive nephropathy and large-scale clinical trials. Our epidemiologic results for Japan as a whole show the same protective effects still more convincingly from a different approach.