Does the in-utero exposure to furosemide delay the renal maturation?

Abstract

Two groups of pregnant Wistar rats were constituted, one treated with Furosemide IP and one with saline. The drug was given on days 7-11 and 14-18 of the pregnancy. Litters from the two groups were not different in number of pups, body weight, and/or kidney weight, but exposed in-utero neonates, studied shortly after birth, exhibited a significant lower number of differentiated glomeruli than those of the control group. As well as the difficulty of explaining this phenomenon, this condition raises the problem of a possible compensation by the postnatal nephrogenesis, which is important in the rat, and leads to the question of what will be the total amount of nephrons for the adult life in species with or without complete in utero nephrogenesis.