Shrinking Kidneys

A sudden assault on your kidneys can be crippling and unfortunately, can also lead to chronic kidney disease if your kidneys don't fully repair. Researchers investigate why using mice subjected to two types of acute kidney injury: one that leads to tissue wasting and one that leads to repair. Fluorescence microscopy of proteins in kidney sections, alongside RNA analysis, revealed that two weeks later, kidneys undergoing wasting had more macrophages compared with kidneys undergoing repair. And these kidneys also underwent a second wave of damage caused by a build-up of immune cells that promote inflammation. Injecting antibodies to deplete these immune cells reduced tissue wasting. Without antibody injections, a month later, fluorescence microscopy of kidney sections revealed smaller kidneys following injury that led to tissue wasting (right), compared with kidneys that underwent repair (left). The persistence of macrophages after injury, therefore, promotes a pro-inflammatory environment that leads to long-term kidney damage.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image adapted from work by Leyuan Xu and colleagues
• Department of Internal Medicine/Section of Nephrology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, August 2022