Fluorimetric Tool to Discriminate Glomerular and Tubular\nInjuries In Vivo

The\netiology and pathological complexity of acute kidney injury\n(AKI) pose great challenges for early diagnosis, typing, and personalized\ntreatment. It is an important reason for poor prognosis and high mortality\nof AKI. In order to provide a relatively noninvasive diagnostic and\ntyping method for AKI, we proposed the pathological changes of albumin\npermeability after glomerular injury and reabsorption efficiency after\ntubular injury as potential entry points. Thus, a renal tubule labeling\nfluorescent dye which features albumin concentration-related fluorescence\nintensity was used to fit these pathological changes. Utilizing this\nfluorescence assay, we realized urinary tract obstruction imaging\nas early as 12 h after morbidity. For glomerular and tubular injury\ndiscrimination, compared to a healthy control, membranous nephropathy\nas a representative glomerular injury resulted in enhanced fluorescence\nintensity of the kidney due to increased albumin penetration, while\nrenal tubular injury caused insufficient dye reabsorption to exhibit\nweakened fluorescence intensity. The significant differences demonstrated\nthe feasibility of this approach for fluorescence imaging-based AKI\ntyping in vivo.