Abstract
Inflammation is a key characteristic of kidney disease, but this immune response is two-faced. In the acute phase of kidney injury, there is an activation of the immune cells to fight against the insult, contributing to kidney repair and regeneration. However, in chronic kidney diseases (CKD), immune cells that infiltrate the kidney play a deleterious role, actively participating in disease progression, and contributing to nephron loss and fibrosis. Importantly, CKD is a chronic inflammatory disease. In early CKD stages, patients present sub-clinical inflammation, activation of immune circulating cells and therefore, anti-inflammatory strategies have been proposed as a common therapeutic target for renal diseases. Recent studies have highlighted the plasticity of immune cells and the complexity of their functions. Among immune cells, monocytes/macrophages play an important role in all steps of kidney injury. However, the phenotype characterization between human and mice immune cells showed different markers; therefore the extrapolation of experimental studies in mice could not reflect human renal diseases. Here we will review the current information about the characteristics of different macrophage phenotypes, mainly focused on macrophage-related cytokines, with special attention to the chemokine CCL18, and its murine functional homolog CCL8, and the macrophage marker CD163, and their role in kidney pathology.
Highlights
ROLE OF IMMUNE CELLS IN THE ONSET AND PROGRESSION OF KIDNEY DISEASERenal inflammation arises as a protective response after kidney injury to fight against the initial insult and to establish tissue repair
This study demonstrates its key role in macrophages development, it showed that some macrophages were still present, indicating the involvement of other growth factors in macrophage differentiation [27], including Granulocytemacrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin-3 (IL-3), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand (Flt3L) [28,29,30]
Future investigations targeting macrophage polarization, and macrophage-derived cytokines could provide novel therapeutic approaches to further reduce the inflammatory response in kidney diseases
Summary
ROLE OF IMMUNE CELLS IN THE ONSET AND PROGRESSION OF KIDNEY DISEASERenal inflammation arises as a protective response after kidney injury to fight against the initial insult and to establish tissue repair. In early CKD stages, patients present sub-clinical inflammation, activation of immune circulating cells and anti-inflammatory strategies have been proposed as a common therapeutic target for renal diseases. We review the macrophage characteristics and phenotypes, comparing human and mice data, and focused on novel macrophage-related cytokines as biomarkers or therapeutic targets for kidney disease.
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