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Acute Kidney Injury

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is an episode of sudden kidney damage or failure. It causes waste products, like creatinine, acids, and urea, to build up in your blood and can cause significant damage to the rest of your body. There are multiple levels of kidney injury, varying from mild to severe with the most severe cases, requiring renal replacement therapy by dialysis.

Investigators in the Section of Nephrology are conducting basic and clinical research to help patients with AKI. Dr. Wilson is conducting clinical trials to guide management of hospitalized patients with AKI. Drs. Moledina and Cantley are collecting kidney biopsy samples from patients with AKI to better understand this disease. Dr. Mansour is studying how kidneys repair after injury both in native and allograft kidneys, as well as after marathon running. Dr. Xu’s lab focuses on the underlying mechanism(s) of kidney repair after AKI and how maladaptive repair can lead to chronic kidney disease (CKD) using mouse models, as well as developing nanomedicine to slow or even reverse AKI-to-CKD transition.