Progressive renal function decline and kidney fibrosis in hyperuricemia-related CKD
From day 0 to day 21, we set four time points and investigated dynamic characteristics of blood, urine, and kidney samples in hyperuricemia-related CKD mice (Figure 1A ). Serum uric acid kept rising and reached peak at day 21. Similar trend to uric acid was observed in renal function measurements. Serum creatinine and urea went up quickly from day 0 to day 7, kept stable at high level at day 14, and then sharply increased to three and four times of baseline level respectively. Urine albumin-to-creatinine (UACR) rose rapidly and became 5-fold level at day 7 compared to day 0, and then slowly declined but still at high level at day 14 and 21 (Figure 1B ). Histologic changes in PAS-staining sections indicated progressive tubular and glomerular injuries. Trichrome-staining sections presented the increasing deposition of collagen in tubular interstitial and glomerular mesangial compartments (Figure 1C ). We further observed progressive inflammatory cell recruitment indicated by chemokine MCP-1, pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β (Figure 1D ), as well as fibrotic marker fibronectin, collagen-I, α-SMA (Figure 1E ).