Brain toxicity via kidney injury is potentially linked by quinolinic acid
In this Episode, Kumar Sharma and Afaf Saliba explain the potential link to kidney injury through brain toxicity due to quinolinic acid.
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Citation Information: JCI Insight. 2025;10(6):e180229. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.180229.
Abstract
Kidney dysfunction often leads to neurological impairment, yet the complex kidney-brain relationship remains elusive. We employed spatial and bulk metabolomics to investigate a mouse model of rapid kidney failure induced by mouse double minute 2 (Mdm2) conditional deletion in the kidney tubules to interrogate kidney and brain metabolism. Pathway enrichment analysis of a focused plasma metabolomics panel pinpointed tryptophan metabolism as the most altered pathway with kidney failure. Spatial metabolomics showed toxic tryptophan metabolites in the kidneys and brains, revealing a connection between advanced kidney disease and accelerated kynurenine degradation. In particular, the excitotoxic metabolite quinolinic acid was localized in ependymal cells in the setting of kidney failure. These findings were associated with brain inflammation and cell death. Separate mouse models of ischemia-induced acute kidney injury and adenine-induced chronic kidney disease also exhibited systemic inflammation and accumulating toxic tryptophan metabolites. Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (stage 3b-4 and stage 5) similarly demonstrated elevated plasma kynurenine metabolites, and quinolinic acid was uniquely correlated with fatigue and reduced quality of life. Overall, our study identifies the kynurenine pathway as a bridge between kidney decline, systemic inflammation, and brain toxicity, offering potential avenues for diagnosis and treatment of neurological issues in kidney disease.
Authors
Afaf Saliba, Subrata Debnath, Ian Tamayo, Hak Joo Lee, Nagarjunachary Ragi, Falguni Das, Richard Montellano, Jana Tumova, Meyer Maddox, Esmeralda Trevino, Pragya Singh, Caitlyn Fastenau, Soumya Maity, Guanshi Zhang, Leila Hejazi, Manjeri A. Venkatachalam, Jason C. O’Connor, Bernard Fongang, Sarah C. Hopp, Kevin F. Bieniek, James D. Lechleiter, Kumar Sharma
