Amelioration of cardio-renal injury with aging in dahl salt-sensitive rats by H2-enriched electrolyzed water.
Zhu WJ, Nakayama M, Mori T, Hao K, Terawaki H, Katoh J, Kabayama S, Ito S. · Medical Gas Research. 2013;3:26.
What kind of evidence is this?
Preclinical
Controlled longitudinal rat study
Cardiovascular and circulatory health
H₂-rich water
Mixed preclinical signal.
Animal physiologic, tissue and biomarker outcomes.
Methods at a glance
Male Dahl salt-sensitive rats followed during aging.
90 rats; 30 per water group, with 10 from each group assessed at 16, 24 and 48 weeks.
Up to 48 weeks.
H2-enriched electrolyzed drinking water available ad libitum and refreshed twice daily.
H2 dissolved in electrolyzed water; not Brown's gas.
Approximately 492.5 ppb dissolved H2.
Not applicable — drinking water.
No oxygen was co-delivered.
Filtered water and dehydrogenated electrolyzed water.
Outcomes and reported result
Blood pressure, renal and cardiac histology, function markers and oxidative-stress measures.
Several age-related kidney, heart and oxidative measures favored H2-enriched water, while blood-pressure and other outcomes were mixed or null.
The full article, three time points, comparators and significant and null outcomes were checked.
A reported association, difference or mechanism is not automatically a clinical benefit. Null findings, outcome type, study design and precision all matter.
Cautions and applicability
Animal aging model; multiple water characteristics require careful interpretation despite the dehydrogenated-water comparator.
Dahl salt-sensitive rats under the reported long-term protocol.
SYRCLE animal-study tool — preliminary
Some concerns
Longitudinal design with unclear concealment, blinding and complete attrition accounting.
Randomization/allocation reporting is limited · Blinding of personnel is unclear · Attrition is incompletely reported in places · Blinding of outcome assessors is unclear · No prospectively registered analysis plan identified
No single-study GRADE certainty rating is assigned. Certainty is assessed by important outcome across a complete eligible evidence set, not by attaching a final grade to one source.
Sources and record status
PMID: 24289332 · DOI: 10.1186/2045-9912-3-26
Free full article in PubMed Central.
PubMed record and PubMed Central full text; extraction checked 9 August 2026.
2026-08-10