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Updated: May 21, 2026

A Large Animal Model for Acute Kidney Injury by Temporary Bilateral Renal Artery Occlusion
Published on: February 2, 2021
Quantification of experimental acute kidney injury by computer-assisted imaging of lectin phytohemagglutinin E
Sascha David1, Ute von Jan, Philipp Kümpers
1Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany. david.sascha@mh-hannover.de
Background:
Acute kidney injury (AKI) in sepsis accompanied by functional impairment regularly lacks histologic pathology to a similar extent. Moderately reproducible - semi-quantitative - scoring systems still remain the method of choice to quantify the extent of experimental AKI. Our aim was to establish a rather simple, fast, and reproducible staining protocol to quantify loss of brush border (BB) in septic AKI.
Methods:
Murine septic AKI was induced by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) and kidneys were harvested 24 h later. Binding of Phaseolus vulgaris erythroagglutinin (PHA-E) was visualized by the ABC-GO method coupled to tetranitroblue tetrazolium (TNBT). The mean BB area of five randomly chosen, non-overlapping cortical fields was analyzed by customized planimetric software.
Results:
We detected statistically significant differences in the BB/noBB pixel ratio between septic AKI, sham-operated animals, and healthy mice (CLP: 0.091 ± 0.019; SHAM: 0.141 ± 0.048, P<.001; HEALTHY controls: 0.266 ± 0.14 pixel ratio). Moreover, this ratio correlates with functional parameters of renal function (creatinine r=-0.37, BUN r=-0.54, P<.0001).
Conclusions:
Our results demonstrate that PHA-E lectin staining followed by planimetric quantification is a reliable tool to analyze loss of BB during experimental AKI.
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