2001 Volume 34 Issue 4 Pages 229-233
The anti-diuretic hormone, vasopressin, has been shown to be important in regulating inner ear fluid. We report on the involvement between Meniere's disease and vasopressin. We designed an experiment to determine whether vasopressin directly affects the fluid level. We chronically infused this hormone in rats and examined them for morphological signs of endolymphatic hydrops. Vasopressin infusion significantly increased the scala media area by 5.9±7.1% (P<0.01), and the length of Reissner's membrane by 5.9±3.2% (P<0.001). The results suggest that high plasma levels of vasopressin may be a principal causal factor of endolymphatic hydrops in Meniere's disease, perhaps due to down-regulating the number of vasopressin receptors.
