ArticleJCI insight2025
Quinolinic acid potentially links kidney injury to brain toxicity.
Article in JCI insight, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Amino acid homeostasis in the kidney: Physiological roles and pathological dysregulation.Physiological reports · 2026Review
- The Kidney-Brain Axis in Chronic Kidney Disease: Uremic Toxins, Cognitive Decline, Mechanistic Pathways, Biomarkers and Therapeutic Perspectives.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- Plasma Metabolomics Reveals a Shared Metabolomic Profile in Experimental and Human Chronic Kidney Disease.Toxins · 2026Article
- Proline/serine-rich coiled-coil 1 alleviates atherosclerosis via remodeling tryptophan metabolism mediated by Akkermansia muciniphila.Experimental & molecular medicine · 2026Article
- Serotonin, Kynurenine, and Indole Pathways of Tryptophan Metabolism in Humans in Health and Disease.Nutrients · 2026Review
- The kynurenine pathway in depression and schizophrenia: convergent signals, divergent states, and clinical signatures.EXCLI journal · 2026Review
- Altered tryptophan metabolism as a contributor to cognitive impairment in chronic kidney disease: a narrative review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Immune Cell Infiltration and Kynurenine Pathway Activation Define Early Injury and Progression in Diabetic Nephropathy.International journal of biological sciences · 2026Article
- Melatonin Administration Attenuates High-Fat-Diet-Induced Renal Damage in Wistar Rats.Biomolecules · 2025Article
- Review
- Quinolinic acid metabolism may mitigate AKI to CKD transition.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Association of NK cells with a shift in tryptophan catabolism in patients with heart failure after a single exercise exertion.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Tryptophan metabolism at the crossroads of the neuro-immuno-microbial axis: implications for precision medicine in chronic diseases.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Review
- The influence of gut microbiota on the gut-brain-kidney axis and its implications for chronic kidney disease.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Review
- Multi-Omics Integration in Nephrology: Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions.Seminars in nephrology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
22 authors.
Funding
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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.