Renal innervation and denervation: lessons from renal transplantation reconsidered.

Renal transplantation assures complete denervation of the kidney. Human renal transplantation provided an opportunity to examine the consequences of renal denervation on renal functional capacity in human subjects. These initial studies led to an anatomical and physiological assessment of the time course of renal neural degeneration and reinnervation following renal transplantation or surgical division of the renal nerves. Together with a growing body of information concerning the extensive intrinsic innervation of the kidney's structural components, there has developed a comprehensive understanding of the overall neural control of kidney function.