KIDNEY FUNCTION IN YOUNG INFANTS

Abstract

IT IS with gratitude that I accept this second E. Mead Johnson Award, being fully aware of the honor it brings to all of us who have shared in the work. The progress of the work has been stimulated by the encouragement and guidance given previously by Dr. Alexis F. Hartmann in St. Louis and, more recently, by Dr. Samuel Z. Levine in New York. I also wish to thank the doctors, nurses, technicians, secretaries and laboratory helpers who have actively participated and especially Miss Helen McNamara who makes the editorial "we" a reality. The nature of our studies required substantial financial support and we wish to express appreciation to the U. S. Public Health Service and the New York Heart Association for supplementing the excellent facilities for research at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. It is the purpose of this paper to consider the development and present status of our knowledge of kidney function in young infants and to indicate some of its application to clinical problems. This knowledge is understandably incomplete because it is only during the last 10 years that the precise technics of kidney physiologists have been applied to the study of kidney function in young infants. The primary role of the kidneys in regulating the composition and volume of body fluids had been established earlier by an important series of observations, utilizing the technics of water and electrolyte balances. In many of these earlier observations there were already indications of an underdeveloped kidney function in young infants.