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  • Between Bedside and Bench
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Scraping fibrosis: UMODulating renal fibrosis

Nature Medicine volume 17, pages 553–555 (2011)Cite this article

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Every medical student learns that the urine sediment may contain a variety of casts—cylindrical structures held together by Tamm-Horsfall protein, a sticky glycoprotein exclusively produced by epithelia of the thick ascending limb of the loop of Henle (TALH) and the early distal tubule that can be released by an unknown sheddase. It was characterized biochemically 60 years ago and shown to be the most abundant mammalian urinary protein, but its multiple proposed functions are still hypothetical. Later on, an immunosuppressive urinary glycoprotein—uromodulin (UMOD)—was isolated from urine of pregnant women, and, in 1987, cDNA sequence analyses determined that Tamm-Horsfall protein and UMOD were identical, and the latter name was adopted1.

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Figure 1: UMOD, normal and genetically determined variants, may actively participate in the pathogenesis of CKD.

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  1. Allison A. Eddy is in the Department of Pediatrics, and in the Division of Nephrology and at the Tissue & Cells Sciences Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA.,

    Allison A Eddy

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Correspondence to Allison A Eddy.

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Eddy, A. Scraping fibrosis: UMODulating renal fibrosis. Nat Med 17, 553–555 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0511-553

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