Hypokalemia

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Parietal Lobe

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Can someone explain to me why hypokalemia leads to an increase in both potassium and hydrogen secretion? It's counterintuitive to me.
 
what is the cause of the hypokalemia in the first place? I don't know how hypokalemia itself would further hypokalemia unless it involved something like an arrhythmia and heart failure so you get a less effective blood flow to the kidney.

In this case you get and upregulation of aldosterone which will preferentially reabsorb sodium at the expense of K+ in principal cells of the collecting tubule. When K+(now being filtered into the collecting tubule lumen) reaches the intercalated cells it gets reabsorbed by the K+/H+ antiporter. But now you get H+ being lost in the urine as well. Overall the intercalated cell cannot reabsorb enough K+ and you get a total loss of K+ and H+.

Hope this helps.
 
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