Cellular pathophysiology of ischemic acute kidney injury

Bonventre, Joseph V.
Yang, Li

¹Renal Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. ²Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. ³Renal Division, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China.

Address correspondence to: Joseph V. Bonventre, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Renal Division, MRB-4, 45 Shattuck Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. Phone: 617.525.5966; Fax: 617.726.4356; E-mail: [email protected].

Journal of Clinical Investigation 121(11):p 4210-4221, November 1, 2011. | DOI: 10.1172/JCI45161

Ischemic kidney injury often occurs in the context of multiple organ failure and sepsis. Here, we review the major components of this dynamic process, which involves hemodynamic alterations, inflammation, and endothelial and epithelial cell injury, followed by repair that can be adaptive and restore epithelial integrity or maladaptive, leading to chronic kidney disease. Better understanding of the cellular pathophysiological processes underlying kidney injury and repair will hopefully result in the design of more targeted therapies to prevent the injury, hasten repair, and minimize chronic progressive kidney disease.