The kidney-skeletal muscle-heart axis in chronic kidney disease: implications for myokines

Myokines are signalling moieties released by the skeletal muscle in response to acute and/or chronic exercise, which exert their beneficial or detrimental effects through paracrine and/or autocrine pathways on the skeletal muscle and through endocrine pathways in many other organs (e.g. the heart). Interestingly, alterations in myokines have been described in patients with heart failure (HF) that are associated with adverse structural and functional left ventricular remodelling and poor cardiac outcomes. Recent experimental and clinical studies have shown that the muscle regulation of a number of myokines is altered in chronic kidney disease (CKD) thus representing a new molecular aspect of the pathophysiology of skeletal myopathy present in patients with CKD. Muscle dysregulation of myokines may contribute to a number of disorders in non-dialysis and dialysis patients with CKD, including the high risk of developing HF. This possibility would translate into a range of new diagnostic and therapeutic options. In fact, the measurement of circulating myokines opens their possible usefulness as biomarkers to personalize exercise training and pharmacological therapies for the prevention and treatment of HF in patients with CKD and skeletal myopathy. This review will analyse information on some myokines that target the heart and are altered at the level of skeletal muscle and circulation in patients with CKD.