The first animal models of hypertension involved constriction of renal arteries (the Goldblatt kidney) or parenchyma (the Page kidney). Although these human analogs closely mimicked the pathophysiology of the disease, renovascular hypertension and the Page kidney represent only a small fraction of human hypertension.

Most experimental studies of hypertension using animals have focused on understanding the mechanisms of primary hypertension. Models of primary hypertension have been more difficult to develop. Some models may have greater face validity than others with respect to phenotypic aspects of hypertension such as age at onset, temporal course, severity, variability, and associated comorbidities. Given the clinical importance of hypertension-related target organ damage, it is noteworthy that models exhibiting face validity for left ventricular hypertrophy, metabolic abnormalities, heart failure, renal damage, and stroke (e.g., spontaneously hypertensive rats [SHR] and Dahl salt-sensitive [DSS] rats) are also available. However, other conditions such as spontaneous development of atherosclerosis or acute myocardial infarction are not typically observed in current models.

[…]