Nephron number may be an important determinant of kidney health but has been difficult to
study in living humans. We evaluated 1638 living kidney donors at Mayo Clinic (MN and AZ
sites) and Cleveland Clinic. We obtained cortical volumes of both kidneys from predonation
computed tomography scans. At the time of kidney transplant, we obtained and analyzed the
sections of a biopsy specimen of the cortex to determine the density of both nonsclerotic and
globally sclerotic glomeruli; the total number of glomeruli was estimated from cortical …