Chitosan oligosaccharide attenuates acute kidney injury and renal interstitial fibrosis induced by ischemia-reperfusion

Abstract

Acute kidney injury (AKI) and renal interstitial fibrosis are global clinical syndromes associated with high morbidity and mortality. Renal ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury, which commonly occurs during surgery, is one of the major causes of AKI. Nevertheless, an efficient therapeutic approach for AKI and the development of renal interstitial fibrosis is still lacking due to its elusive pathogenetic mechanism. Here, we showed that chitosan oligosaccharide (COS), a natural oligomer polysaccharide degraded from chitosan, significantly attenuates I/R-induced AKI and maintains glomerular filtration function by inhibiting oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage, and excessive endoplasmic reticulum stress both in vitro and in vivo. In addition, long-term administration of COS can also attenuate the proliferation of myofibroblasts, mitigate extra cellular matrix deposition, and thus inhibit the transition of AKI to chronic kidney disease through participating in metabolic and redox biological processes. Our findings provide novel insights into the protective role of COS against acute kidney injury.

Keywords:

• AKI
• COS
• renal interstitial fibrosis
• I/R injury

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants and staff of this study for their time and commitment.

Ethical approval

Our study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University (Ethical approval no. QYFY WZLL27937).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2020MC083 to Z.W and ZR2020MH077 to X.T.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (32070859 to Z.W.), Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong Province (TS20190931 to Z.W.), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (316116 to X.T.).