Table 1.

Summary of different pre-clinical studies with arginine/citrulline supplementation

Disease	Animal model	The outcome of L-arginine or citrulline    supplementation
Atherosclerosis	Hypercholesterolemic rabbit	- ↓ lesion surface area[110, 34, 38, 35] - ↓intima thickness[34-36, 45] - Absence of adherent monocytes or tissue macrophages[45] - Prevents xanthoma formation[110]
	LDL receptor knockout mouse
Vascular endothelial function	Hypercholesterolemic rabbit	- ↑ Endothelial dependent relaxation [34-39] - ↑NO production/superoxide radical release[34, 39, 38, 111]
Pulmonary hypertension	Hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension (rat and newborn pig) Monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertension [43]	- ↑NO production [40, 42, 44, 53] - ↓Pulmonary vascular resistance[40-44]
Systemic hypertension	Salt-sensitive hypertensive (rats) Spontaneous hypertension (young rat)	-↑NO production[48, 47]
Preeclampsia	Insulin induced hypertension (pregnant rat)	- ↓Blood pressure[49, 51, 50, 52] - ↓urinary metabolites or nitrate[49, 51, 50, 52] - ↓urine protein excretion[51, 52]
	Adriamycin-induced nephropathy (pregnant rat)

↓=decrease; ↑= increase; LDL= Low Density Lipoprotein; NO= Nitric Oxide; PAH=Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension