[Velocity of glomerular filtration in intrauterine malnutrition. Effects of hematocrit].

With the technique of single inulin injection, the speed of glomerular filtration (GFR) was evaluated in 16 healthy newborns and in 29 in-utero malnourished infants. The GFR was of 30.22 +/- 10.23 ml/min/1.73 m2 for healthy infants and of 41.86 +/- 17.63 for malnourished cases (p greater than 0.05). When full term infants were compared with pre-term, no difference was shown (p greater than 0.05) either in the healthy group as in the malnourished. The most important finding was that malnourished infants with hematocrit greater than or equal to 60, showed decrease in GFR as compared with those whose hematocrits were less than or equal to 58; likewise, the correlation coefficient of the hematocrit with GFR was inverse and significant (p less than 0.001).