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Renal physiology

Burning calories to excrete salt

New findings challenge the dogma that high salt intake leads to increased thirst, water intake and diuresis. Titze and colleagues show that salt loading activates an adaptive regulatory network in the kidney, muscle and liver, which enables the reprioritization of energy metabolism to conserve plasma water in the setting of high salt intake.

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Figure 1: Mechanism of water conservation in the presence of high salt intake.

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Correspondence to Ton J. Rabelink.

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Rabelink, T. Burning calories to excrete salt. Nat Rev Nephrol 13, 323–324 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneph.2017.62

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