Nephrology ranks next to last in career choices among US medical school graduates. The American Society of Nephrology established a Workforce Committee to help address this issue. Surveys of US medical students indicate that experiences during kidney pathophysiology courses in the preclerkship years may impact their decision to consider a career in nephrology. In October of 2011, preclinical ki...

Perfusion of the renal medulla plays an important role in salt and water balance. Pericytes are smooth muscle-like cells that impart contractile function to descending vasa recta (DVR), the arteriolar segments that supply the medulla with blood flow. DVR contraction by ANG II is mediated by depolarization resulting from an increase in plasma membrane Cl(-) conductance that secondarily gates vol...

The discovery of aquaporin-1 (AQP1) by Agre and associates answered the longstanding biophysical question of how water specifically crosses biological membranes. In the kidney at least 7 aquaporins are expressed at distinct sites. AQP1 is extremely abundant in the proximal tubule and descending thin limb and is essential for urinary concentration. AQP2 is exclusively expressed in the principal ...

Elżbieta Kompanowska-Jezierska, Helle Wolff, Marta Kuczeriszka, Jan B. Gramsbergen, Agnieszka Walkowska, Edward J. Johns, and Peter Bie Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark; Laboratory of Renal and Body Fluid Physiology, M. Mossakowski Medical Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland; Department of Anatomy and Neurob...