Question: What produces the hormone that promotes sodium retention in the distal nephron?

Angiotensin is a peptide hormone that causes vasoconstriction and a subsequent increase in blood pressure.  It is part of the renin-angiotensin system, which is a major target for drugs that raises blood pressure.  Aldosterone promotes sodium retention in the distal nephron, in the kidney, which also drives blood pressure up.  Angiotensin also stimulates the release of aldosterone, another hormone, from the adrenal cortex. <SEP> Low pressure receptors are baroreceptors located in the venae cavae and the pulmonary arteries, and in the atria.  They are also called volume receptors.  These receptors respond to changes in the wall tension, which is proportional to the filling state of the low pressure side of circulation (below 60mmHg).  Their impulses regulate the secretion of antidiuretic hormone (ADH/Vasopressin), renin and aldosterone.  An elevated atrial pressure produces a decrease in ADH and aldosterone secretion.  The decrease in vasopressin secretion results in an increase in the volume of urine excreted, serving to lower blood pressure.  In addition, stretching of atrial receptors increases secretion of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), which promotes increased water and sodium excretion through the urine. <SEP> Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait (8 January 1917 – 28 February 2003) ("née" Wardropper, known as Sylvia Simpson from 1941 to 1956) was an English biochemist and endocrinologist.  She worked with her second husband, James Francis Tait, from 1948 until her death in 2003, a partnership described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "one of the most successful examples of husband-wife scientific collaboration".  Together, they discovered and identified the hormone aldosterone, the last of a series of naturally occurring biologically potent steroid hormones to be isolated and identified between the 1920s to the 1950s, after the androgens, oestrogens, and glucocorticoid hormones.  Aldosterone is part of the mechanism that regulates blood pressure, and causes conservation of sodium, secretion of potassium, increased water retention, and increased blood pressure.  It is thought to be responsible for 15 per cent of cases of high blood pressure. <SEP> Aldosterone, the main mineralocorticoid hormone, is a steroid hormone produced by the zona glomerulosa of the adrenal cortex in the adrenal gland.  It is essential for sodium conservation in the kidney, salivary glands, sweat glands and colon.  It plays a central role in the regulation of the plasma sodium (Na), the extracellular potassium (K) and arterial blood pressure.  It does so mainly by acting on the mineralocorticoid receptors in the distal tubules and collecting ducts of the nephron.  It influences the reabsorption of sodium and excretion of potassium (from and into the tubular fluids, respectively) of the kidney, thereby indirectly influencing water retention or loss, blood pressure and blood volume.  When dysregulated, aldosterone is pathogenic and contributes to the development and progression of cardiovascular and renal disease.  Aldosterone has exactly the opposite function of the atrial natriuretic hormone secreted by the heart.