Anatomical and Physiological Similarities of Kidney in Different Experimental Animals Used for Basic Studies

Abstract

Introduction: Before the experiment on kidney disorder, it is important to know the basic physiologies of the animal kidney because the anatomical and physiological features of the kidney are varying in different kind of experimental animals used for the basic study. This study focus on the variations in the nephron, a morphological process of podocytes, a path of the renal arteries, a position of the medulla and renal cortex are unusual in different animals. In human, middle and caudal lobe is larger while in rat small rounded cranial lobe present in comparison to other experimental animals. Statistically the mean length 10.40 ± 0.90 cm, width 4.20 ± 0.70 cm, thickness 1.5 ± 0.20 cm, and weight 136.71 ± 31.74 g; while in rat the mean length 1.54 ± 0.02 cm, width 0.85 ± 0.07 cm, thickness 0.73 ± 0.02 cm and weight 0.64 ± 0.03 g. Human has shorter loops of Henle, which dip only into the outer medulla while in monkey both the renal cortex and medulla are higher in numbers than in dogs. The renal lobule of mallard species was comparatively divided into two equal cortical and medullary regions while in chickens the cortical region was the larger as compared to medullary region resembling numerous mammalian types and few of swine type. In contrast, the severity of tubular degeneration, inflammation, fibrosis, tubular epithelial single-cell necrosis, and decreased normal parenchyma is responsible for proteinuria. The morphological process of podocyte development has been reported in the classic kidney of human, horse, goat, monkey, rabbit, cat, dog, chicken, medaka fish, rat and guinea pig indicating that it would be a good model system for studying renal regeneration.