Histones and Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Enhance Tubular Necrosis and Remote Organ Injury in Ischemic AKI

What is it about?

Histone are positively charged macroproteins that wind up the DNA inside the nucleus of all cells. Cell necrosis releases histones into the extracellular space where they trigger inflammation and further cell necrosis, i.e. necroinflammation. Here we describe how histones released by activated neutrophils contribute to kidney damage upon acute kidney injury (acute tubular necrosis). As a new finding we demonstrate that circulating histones releaed from the injured kidney induce lung injury, a common complication of severly ill patients with acute kidney injury.

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