What is it about?
Focal segmental glomerulus sclerosis (FSGS) is a kidney disease that damages the kidney’s filter and affects approximately 100,000 patients in the United States. A significant percentage of these patients progress to end stage kidney disease, which requires dialysis or renal transplantation to sustain life.
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Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Current therapies often fail to stabilize or improve kidney function.
Perspectives
Natriuretic peptides (NPs) are proteins that circulate in the blood and reduce blood pressure. More recent studies suggest that NPs also protect the cells forming the kidney’s filter. The renal protective actions of NPs are negatively regulated by binding sites on cells that remove NPs from the circulation (NP receptors). In our study, we increased the renal protective effects of NPs by deleting these NP receptors specifically in the kidney’s filtering apparatus. We found that enhancing the effects of NPs prevented death of the cells forming the kidney’s filter and significantly reduced scaring of the kidney’s filtering apparatus in a mouse mode of FSGS. These findings suggest that enhancing the effects of NPs by inhibiting removal of NPs from the circulation may be a useful therapeutic approach to treat FSGS.
Robert Spurney
Duke University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Podocyte specific knockout of the natriuretic peptide clearance receptor is podocyte protective in focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, PLOS One, March 2025, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0319424.
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