Abstract
Within the sympathetic nervous system, neurons and surrounding glia engage in bidirectional communication, integrating multiple inputs to influence signal passing to target organs. In the context of hypertension, elevated activity levels in the ganglia may suggest a homeostatic mechanism gone wrong. A comparative investigation of characteristics of the ganglia at multiple time points before and after onset of hypertension in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat (SHR) disease model suggests a loss of regulation may contribute to pathology. SHR Sympathetic Cervical Ganglia form fewer synapses than normotensive controls at neonatal ages, but lose this down regulation during development, and eventually form more synapses than their Wistar Kyoto normotensive counterparts. A decreased glial presence and increased level of c-Fos expression in the adult SHR ganglia compared to WKY also suggest that the system experiences elevated sympathetic activity, and that glia may play an important role in system regulation. These results offer longitudinal insight into the loss of compensatory mechanisms over the development of disease in a hypertensive animal model.