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A shunted model of renal inner medulla with pre‐bend transitions: Comparison with multi‐nephron models.
Author(s) -
Gonzalez Maria,
Thomas S. Randall,
Hegarty Alan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.23.1_supplement.818.7
Subject(s) - nephron , renal medulla , medullary cavity , medulla , computer science , shunt (medical) , anatomy , kidney , biology , medicine , endocrinology
Mathematical models of the renal medulla face the problem of representing water and solute transfer among tens of thousands of nephrons and blood vessels of various lengths, arranged in countercurrent fashion. Published models fall into two broad categories with respect to this issue: multi‐nephron models, which explicitly represent a large number of individual nephrons, or lumped models with virtual shunts that represent the turning back of nephrons and vessels at varying depths. Shunt‐models have the advantage of a compact description and relatively rapid execution time but are ill‐suited to faithfully represent features such as pre‐bend transitions of epithelial permeabilities in nephrons of different lengths. Multi‐nephron models can explicitly represent such changes in individual nephrons at various medullary depths, but require greater resources of computer memory and more CPU time. We present a new shunt‐model approach that can accommodate pre‐bend transitions of nephrons at all medullary depths. The results of simulations with this model and a comparable multi‐nephron model are compared on the basis of model results (predicted flows and concentrations) and the required computer resources.