Résumé
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is commonly associated with kidney damage, and the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for SARS-CoV-2 is highly expressed in the proximal tubule cells. Whether patients with COVID-19 present specific manifestations of proximal tubule dysfunction remains unknown. To test this, we examined a cohort of 49 patients requiring hospitalization in a large academic hospital in Brussels, Belgium. There was evidence of proximal tubule dysfunction in a subset of patients with COVID-19, as attested by low-molecular-weight proteinuria (70-80%), neutral aminoaciduria (46%), and defective handling of uric acid (46%) or phosphate (19%). None of the patients had normoglycemic glucosuria. Proximal tubule dysfunction was independent of pre-existing comorbidities, glomerular proteinuria, nephrotoxic medications or viral load. At the structural level, kidneys from patients with COVID-19 showed prominent tubular injury, including in the initial part of the proximal tubule, with brush border loss, acute tubular necrosis, intraluminal debris, and a marked decrease in the expression of megalin in the brush border. Transmission electron microscopy identified particles resembling coronaviruses in vacuoles or cisternae of the endoplasmic reticulum in proximal tubule cells. Among features of proximal tubule dysfunction, hypouricemia with inappropriate uricosuria was independently associated with disease severity and with a significant increase in the risk of respiratory failure requiring invasive mechanical ventilation using Cox (adjusted hazard ratio 6.2, 95% CI 1.9-20.1) or competing risks (adjusted sub-distribution hazard ratio 12.1, 95% CI 2.7-55.4) survival models. Thus, our data establish that SARS-CoV-2 causes specific manifestations of proximal tubule dysfunction and provide novel insights into COVID-19 severity and outcome.
| langue originale | Anglais |
|---|---|
| Pages (de - à) | 1296-1307 |
| Nombre de pages | 12 |
| journal | Kidney international |
| Volume | 98 |
| Numéro de publication | 5 |
| Les DOIs | |
| Etat de la publication | Publié - nov. 2020 |
| Modification externe | Oui |
Financement
JM is supported by the National Fund for Scientific Research (Brussels, Belgium), the Saint-Luc Foundation (Brussels, Belgium), the Clinical Research Fund at Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc (Brussels, Belgium), and the Association pour l’Information et la Recherche sur les Maladies Rénales Génétiques (Brussels, Belgium). OD is supported by the European Reference Network for Rare Kidney Diseases (ERKNet)—project ID 739532 (Europe); the Cystinosis Research Foundation (USA); the NCCR Kidney.CH program ( Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland ); and the Swiss National Science Foundation : 310030-189044 (Switzerland). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, reporting, or the decision to submit for publication. We thank Yvette Cnops, Huguette Debaix, and Sebastien Druart for expert technical assistance; Cynthia S. Goldsmith (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA), Andres Kaech (University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland), Johannes Loffing (University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland), John Shelburne (Durham Veterans Administration Hospital, Durham, NC, USA), and Marie-Francoise Vincent (UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium) for helpful discussions; and Caroline Bouzin and Arthur Colson for image acquisition and analysis. Imaging was performed at the IREC Imaging platform at UCLouvain (Brussels, Belgium), and with equipment maintained by the Center for Microscopy and Image Analysis, University of Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland). JM is supported by the National Fund for Scientific Research (Brussels, Belgium), the Saint-Luc Foundation (Brussels, Belgium), the Clinical Research Fund at Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc (Brussels, Belgium), and the Association pour l'Information et la Recherche sur les Maladies Rénales Génétiques (Brussels, Belgium). OD is supported by the European Reference Network for Rare Kidney Diseases (ERKNet)—project ID 739532 (Europe); the Cystinosis Research Foundation (USA); the NCCR Kidney.CH program (Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland); and the Swiss National Science Foundation: 310030-189044 (Switzerland). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, reporting, or the decision to submit for publication. AW, OD, MJ, and JM designed the study; AW, LB, MP, AP, JDG, HY, LP, JCY, LG, XW, PFL, and JM took care of the patients; AW, MP, and JM collected clinical data; GS and SA performed postmortem examinations; JD, OD, and JM assessed and interpreted urine amino acids; AS performed and interpreted SARS-CoV-2 PCR; ZC, SEM, OD, and JM performed, supervised, and analyzed experiments; JM performed statistical analyses. Each author contributed important intellectual content during manuscript drafting or revision and agrees to be personally accountable for the individual's own contributions and to ensure that questions pertaining to the accuracy or integrity of any portion of the work, even one in which the author was not directly involved, are appropriately investigated and resolved, including with documentation in the literature if appropriate.
| Bailleurs de fonds | Numéro du bailleur de fonds |
|---|---|
| Association pour l'Information et la Recherche sur les Maladies Rénales Génétiques | |
| Association pour l'Information et la Recherche sur les Maladies Rénales Génétiques | |
| Durham Veterans Administration Hospital | |
| NCCR Kidney.CH program | |
| Cystinosis Research Foundation | |
| Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | 310030-189044 |
| Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | |
| Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.-FNRS | |
| University of Zurich | |
| Fondation Saint Luc | |
| European Rare Kidney Disease Reference Network | 739532 |
| European Rare Kidney Disease Reference Network |