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Stem cells may hold key to treating kidney damage

Category: Kidney Diseases

Individuals who have kidney testing that shows that they have impaired renal function due to infection may soon have a new treatment option. A team of researchers has reported in the journal Cell Medicine that it may soon be possible to transplant stem cells to treat certain kidney conditions.

Researchers from the University of Tehran said that they have successfully taken renal progenitor cells, or RPCs, from rats with kidney infections and used them to treat damage that was caused by the condition.

For the study, the researchers induced pyelonephritis, a type of urinary infection that causes extensive damage to the kidneys, in a group of rats. They then took RPCs from the subjects' left kidneys and injected them back into their right kidneys.

By the end of the two-month study period tubular atrophy and fibrosis were healed and overall kidney integrity was restored.

"Our RPC transplant study demonstrated benefits for pyelonephritis, a disease characterized by severe inflammation, renal function impairment and eventual scarring, and which remains a major cause of end-stage-renal disease worldwide," said Abdol-Mohammad Kajbafzadeh, who led the study.