Robert Augustyniak of the OUWBSOM studies hypertension

Robert Augustyniak serves as an Assistant Professor in the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, and is helping to develop the physiology component of the medical school curriculum. You can listen to him describe his approach to teaching medical students in a video. Besides his role as a teacher, Augustyniak also is a leading researcher studying the neural mechanisms of high blood pressure (hypertension). He recently published a paper about how Maternal Protein Restriction Leads to Hyperresponsiveness to Stress and Salt-Sensitive Hypertension in Male Offspring (American Journal of Physiology, Volume 298, Pages R1375-R1382, 2010). He and his colleagues fed rats a low-protein diet to study the mechanisms of low birth weight-related hypertension. Their data indicate that, while male low-protein offspring are not hypertensive during young adulthood, their blood pressure is hyperresponsive to restraint stress and is salt sensitive, and the flow rate through their kidneys (their glomerular filtration rate) is more sensitive to hypertension-causing insults. Collectively, these may predispose for the development of hypertension later in life.