New Finding Brings Hope for People With Kidney Disease

Podocytes - the blood-filtering cells contribute to kidney function decline, say researchers. These cells are found to be the attractive targets for treatments against kidney failure.

Marcus Moeller, MD, Bart Smeets, PhD, Katja Berger (RWTH University of Aachen, in Germany), and their colleagues looked to see if they could coax podocytes to be generated from putative kidney progenitor cells- termed parietal cells- as a potential treatment strategy for kidney failure.

Kidney Failure due to Melamine Toxicity
Adulteration of food with melamine results in the formation of kidney stones and kidney failure, even leading to death.

Through experiments conducted in mice, the researchers found that podocytes cannot be renewed from parietal cells. In fact, after the loss of podocytes, parietal cells play a negative role by causing kidney scarring that contributes to progressive kidney function decline.

Moeller said this opens a very important new strategy to prevent loss of kidney function: by inhibiting the parietal cells from doing their destructive work.

The researchers did, however, detect an additional but limited reserve of podocytes that are present at birth and become mature and functional filter cells by adulthood.

Quiz on Kidney
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs, each about the size of a fist, and are located just below the rib cage, one on each side of your spine.

Healthy kidneys filter about half a cup of blood every minute, removing wastes and extra water to make urine. The urine flows from the kidneys to the bladder through two thin tubes of muscle called ureters, one on each side of your bladder. The bladder stores urine. The kidneys, ureters, and bladder are partof the urinary tract.

kidneys remove wastes and extra fluid from your body. Kidneys also remove acid that is produced by the cells of your body and maintain a healthy balance of water, salts, and minerals-such as sodium, calcium, phosphorus and potassium-in your blood ().

Without this balance, nerves, muscles, and other tissues in the body may not work normally.

Kidneys also make hormones that help