L26 - Kidney - Structure And Blood Filtration Flashcards
What are the structures in the renal system?
- 2 kidneys
- 2 ureters
- bladder
- urethra
What are the functions of the kidney?
- regulation of water, salts, acid-base balance
- removal of metabolic waste, foreign chemicals
- gluconeogenesis
- production of hormones/enzymes
What are examples of hormones/enzymes that the kidney produces?
- erythropoeitin (control RBD production)
- renin (controls BP and Na+ balance)
- activates vitamin D (regulates Ca2+)
What is the anatomy of the kidney (in cross section)?
- capsule (separates the kidney from the rest of the body)
- cortex
- medulla
- renal pelvis
- urether
What is the output like in one kidney?
- contrain 1 mil nephrons
- feed into collecting ducts
- feed into ureter
What areas of the kidney can the nephron be found in?
- cortex
- medulla
What are the sections of the nephron?
- glomerulus
- bowman’s capsule
- PCT
- loop of henle
-DCT - collecting duct
Where does blood filtration occur in the nephron?
- glomerulus
- bowman’s capsule
What type of relationship is there between blood vessels and the nephron? What does this allow?
Intrinsic relationship
- allows fine tuning of waste products
What are the key steps in the function of the nephron?
- glomerular filtration
- tubular secretion
- tubular reabsorption
What way does blood flow in from the blood vessel into the bowman’s capsule?
Afferent arteriole to the efferent arteriole
What are the blood vessels like at the glomerulus? And why?
Bunched up
- increases surface area
What are the epithelial cells like of the blood vessels in the glomerulus? And why?
They are more porous
- allows small substances to leave
What are podocytes?
Cells with lots of small projections that wrap around the blood vessels
- sieve substances
What do podocytes allow the absorption of?
- water
- salts
- glucose
- a/a
- urea
- uric acid
- creatine
- small drugs
Anything <8nm
