Retard de croissance intra-utérin et déficit en néphrons

The number of nephrons at birth is normally quite fixed in any species. Severe renal hypoplasia is readily detected because of functional insufficiency, but moderate inborn nephron deficits may exist, yeat remain undetected. A systematic anatomical study revealed a large quantitative variation of the number of nephrons at birth in man (600000-1400000). Inborn nephron deficits were found to correlate very strongly with birth weight in the rat