What Are the Effects of a Lack of Vasopressin?

If you don’t have enough vasopressin, your kidneys may excrete too much water. This causes frequent urination and can lead to dehydration, as well as low blood pressure.

Lack of vasopressin can be caused by:

• Damage to the hypothalamus or pituitary gland
• Drinking an excessive amount of water

Vasopressin in Medical Practice

While vasopressin occurs naturally in the body, healthcare providers also use a synthetic drug called vasopressin (Pitressin) to help manage the following conditions:

• Diabetes insipidus, in which the kidneys are insensitive to vasopressin because of a tumor, trauma, medication side effect, or inflammation of the pituitary gland or hypothalamus, leading to water loss through frequent urination
• Bleeding abnormalities, such as von Willebrand disease and mild hemophilia A
• Esophageal variceal hemorrhage, in which veins in the esophagus become enlarged and bleed
• Asystolic cardiac arrest, when the heart stops beating, with no electrical activity detected
• Septic shock, a serious condition involving extremely low blood pressure caused by an infection

Vasopressin is usually given in a hospital or clinical setting, and is administered by injection into a muscle or vein, per research.

If you have diabetes insipidus and don’t need to be treated in a clinical setting, your healthcare provider may show you how to prepare and inject vasopressin at home, or you may be able to take it via oral medication or nasal spray.