Impact of acute kidney disease on damaged cells

New Delhi, Sep 05: A study shows new insights on how damaged cells interact with disease-infested micro-environments following acute kidney injury (AKI).

AKI is a serious global health hazard, especially community-acquired AKI (CA-AKI).

In nations like India, the International Society of Nephrology's "0 by 25" slogan, with the goal to eliminate unnecessary fatalities from AKI to zero by 2025 is unachievable, presumably because there is a dearth of information and action to address this pressing public health concern, especially in third world countries that struggle with the most basic of needs, owing to factors like low GDP, income disparity, less access to resources, etc.

A study using a cutting-edge tool called seqFISH, developed by the University of South California and Caltech, has found that over 1,000 genes in damaged kidney tissue can be analysed. The researchers identified micro-environments associated with injury and predicted cellular interactions associated with the progression to chronic kidney disease (CKD). This could help identify targets for preventing kidney failure and CKD.

Scientists have identified pathological micro-environments in the kidney's outermost layer, which they named"ME-5," which contains a proximal tubule cell (PT) -- the cell that filters waste from the blood, located in the kidneys, vulnerable to injury.

In ME-5, injured PTs and fibroblasts exchange signals promoting inflammation and fibrosis.

Another injury-associated micro-environments, dubbed "ME-16", contains tertiary lymphoid structures -- a place in the body where immune cells gather to fight diseases, contributing to chronic inflammation, distributed throughout the injured organ, which is what makes things worse in patients because it does not stay in one place only, it spreads to other organs in the vicinity, making things much more debilitated for the patient.