Effects of intra-animal nephron heterogeneity on studies of glomerular dynamics

Quintuplicate determinations of the parameters measured in studies of glomerular dynamics revealed that the intra-animal coefficients of variation for Bowman's space and star vessel pressures, nephron filtration rate, and filtration fractions were 54 to 72% larger than the corresponding interanimal coefficients of variation; those for glomerular capillary pressure were more nearly equal. With a net efferent filtration pressure (delta PE) of 10.6 +/- SEM 1.9 mm Hg, the rats were far from filtration pressure equilibrium and the calculated ultrafiltration coefficient (Kf) of 2.1 +/- SEM 0.2 nl/min X mm Hg was lower than in many other studies. Statistical analysis revealed that the precision of estimates of both the measured and the derived parameters in glomerular dynamic studies is affected appreciably by ignoring the intra-animal effect. The importance of the intra-animal variance in glomerular dynamic studies is greatest when only one or two samples of each measured parameter are obtained in every rat (k = 1 or 2) and least when k is large. Triplicate sampling provides combined SEMs that are not greatly larger than those obtained with k = 5, however, and offers the greatest economy in studies of glomerular dynamics. The number of animals required to provide values with delta PE and Kf that are within +/- 20% of the "true" values is rather large.