The death of a myth: Females are not resistant to acute kidney injury

There is an important gap of knowledge regarding the mechanisms behind the greater prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in females compared with males. Most of the published reports suggest that females are protected from acute kidney injury (AKI) and from the AKI-to-CKD transition; however, in this issue of Clinical Science, Moronge et al. demonstrate that female rats present with subclinical markers of kidney damage post-ischemic reperfusion injury despite normalized levels of plasma creatinine. These studies underscore the potential for this AKI-induced subclinical injury to underlie the higher sensitivity of females to develop CKD later in life.