Kidney and Urinary Bladder

This chapter reviews the mouse kidney and lower urinary tract as models for human diseases. Many mouse strains develop spontaneous strain-specific lesions, which can be confused with outcomes or complications of particular experiments. Inspection of pathology slides from a new mouse model may suggest a paucity of glomeruli, or the mouse model may have been developed with the intention of reducing glomerular numbers, to study the effects of glomerular hyperfiltration or chronic kidney disease. Immunologic renal disease is typically associated with the deposition of one or more immunoglobulins, sometimes in association with complement. Transgenic mouse models, and to a lesser extent knockout mouse models, have been developed for a wide range of human glomerular and tubular diseases, although gaps remain with some human disease lacking a phenocopy in mouse. The chapter discusses spontaneous tubular lesions of mice, and genetic disorders of humans and mice.