Objectives: To determine the effect of high salt diet on distribution of leukocyte subpopulations in blood. Determine the effect of high salt diet on dynamics of leukocyte activation by determining ligand expression on leukocytes complementary activation markers on endothelial cells of healthy rats. Study design: experimental study on animal model Materials and Methods: Healthy Sprague-Dawley rats, at the age 10-11 weeks were divided into two groups. The first group was on a standard diet and the second group was on the high salt diet (4 % NaCl) for 7 days. Cells collected from peripheral blood samples were analyzed by flow cytometer. Data before and after the dietary protocol were compared with t-paired test in case of normal distribution or Wilcoxon runk-sum test if data were not normally distributed. SigmaPlot, v 11.2, was used for analysis. Results: The results show that the high salt diet changes the distribution of granulocytes and monocytes, but did not significantly alter the distribution of T lymphocytes. The expression of CD49d and CD11b on CD4 and CD8 T lymphocytes was not significantly altered by the intake of salt (p > 0.05), while there was a statistically significant decrease in monocyte counts with expressed CD49d (p = 0,0103) and increase in the number of granulocytes expressed with CD11b (p = 0.0042) in rats on the high salt diet in comparison with rats on low salt diet. Conclusion: The high salt diet affects the distribution of some leukocyte subopopulations. Reduce in number of monocytes expressing CD49d and increase in number of granulocytes expressing CD11b integrin may indicate their role in the initial stages of the atherosclerotic lesion.