The Importance of Chloride for Metabolic Alkalosis

Chlorine and chloride depletion is really important for the maintenance of metabolic alkalosis. One reason that chloride ends up being particularly important is because of a molecule in exchanger called pendron. And so if you deliver a lot of chloride to the cortical collecting duct, it will exchange that chloride for a bicarbonate. But it clearly can only work if you give it chloride to work with. The cool thing is you can give back the chloride in all sorts of different forms.