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Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Analyses of Proteinuria, Renal Infiltration of Leukocytes, and Renal Deposition of Proteins in Lupus-prone MRL/lpr Mice
Published on: June 8, 2022
Renal NLRP3 Inflammasome activation is associated with disease activity in lupus nephritis
Fei-Fei Chen1, Xiao-Tian Liu1, Juan Tao1
1Renal Division, Department of Medicine, Peking University First Hospital, PR China; Institute of Nephrology, Peking University, PR China; Key laboratory of Renal Disease, Ministry of Health of China, PR China; Key Laboratory of CKD Prevention and Treatment, Ministry of Education of China, PR China.
Abstract:
The current study was initiated to comprehensively evaluate renal NLRP3 inflammasome pathway activation in lupus nephritis (LN) patients and their clinicopathological significances based on a Chinese LN cohort. We found that the expressions of NLRP3, ASC, caspase-1, IL-1β and IL-18 were all significantly higher in the kidneys of LN patients and were predominantly expressed in glomerular mesangial cells, podocytes, renal tubular epithelial cells and macrophages. The expressions of NLRP3, ASC, caspase-1 and IL-1β were positively correlated to SLEDAI scores and several renal pathological activity indices, while the expression of NLRP3 was negatively associated with chronicity scores. Moreover, the foot process width was positively correlated with glomerular caspase-1 levels, and several podocyte injury markers were decreased significantly in LN patients with higher caspase-1 expression compared with those with lower expression. Our findings indicated that renal NLRP3 inflammasome was activated in LN patients and correlated with disease activity, which needs further explorations.
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