Mechanism of podocyte injury

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When the kidney does not function due to diabetes or nephritis, patients need to have lifelong dialysis or renal replacement therapy. Also, they have increased risk for heart and vascular diseases. In this situation, a specialized type of kidney cells, named podocytes, are lost. We tried to increase the number of podocytes which do not normally proliferate after birth, but podocyte proliferation caused kidney injury. We also found that injury in a fraction of podocytes causes injury in other initially intact podocytes, thus forming a vicious cycle toward total loss of podocytes.