American researchers think they can explain – in part – the onset of kidney failure, particularly in diabetics, via a weakening of the kidney’s cleansing activity. This discovery highlights a chain of actors whose modification could lead to new preventive treatments.
- American researchers have observed that a drop in autophagy in the kidney causes the tubule to overheat, thus weakening the entire kidney.
- Scientists have detected a causal chain that causes this autophagy dysfunction. They are convinced that avoiding this dysfunction could prevent or slow down the onset of kidney failure.
About 30-40% of people with diabetes develop a disease that destroys their kidneys slowly. If the damage is known, the process remained obscure. Researchers from Augusta University (United States) published on August 17 in The Journal of clinical investigation their understanding of the phenomenon. They noticed that diabetic kidney disease disrupts the cleansing mechanism of the kidneys by increasing autophagy activity (destruction by enzymes of damaged proteins or cells), which ends up “leaving the kidneys more vulnerable”, popularizes Toni Bakerdirector of communications at the University’s Medical College
“This is the first time we understand that there is a new mechanism that leads to autophagy dysfunction in chronic kidney disease like diabetes.says Zheng Dong, author of the study and holder of a chair in cell biology and anatomy at the Georgia College of Medicine at Augusta University. I think it also suggests that we have a targeted pathway to prevent or slow the progression of kidney failure.” An immense hope for all diabetics.
Avenues for therapeutic research
The researchers noticed a sharp decrease in autophagy activity in the kidney. This drop in activity causes a proliferation of unhealthy cells in the kidney, scarring, inflammation and then infection of the urine. They looked on mice for the causes of this dysfunction. One thing leading to another, they discovered that the slowing of autophagy is caused by a drop in the levels of the autophagy activation gene (ULK1) itself caused by the miR-214 microRNA normally not involved in this process. process and which has nevertheless increased in the organism. This microRNA is itself controlled by the tumor suppressor (p53), known to regulate the cell cycle. Scientists also suspect it is brought on by stress to help eliminate bad cells.
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