Variation in Human Nephron Number and Association with Disease

For almost a century, each human kidney was considered to contain approximately one million nephrons. This was the number cited in all Nephrology, anatomy, and histology textbooks. However, recent evidence from studies of several racial groups indicates that although one million nephrons are close to the average number of nephrons in a single human kidney, nephron number varies widely among subjects. Indeed, the number varies more than 13-fold, and this variation occurs in the absence of kidney disease?in other words, this variation exists in the normal human population. The number of nephrons in a kidney became......