Comment on "Renal Protective Effect of Sirtuin 1".

I read the review article written by Dong et al. [1] regarding the renal effects of sirtuin 1 with great interest. The authors described the harmful effects of advanced glycation end products on podocyte apoptosis via increasing Bcl-2 protein secondary to forkhead box O4 (FOXO4) acetylation in diabetes mellitus according to Chung et al.' findings. However, Chuang et al. [2] demonstrated that the apoptosis of podocyte was associated with the expression of a proapoptosis gene, Bcl-2-like 11 (Bcl2l11), not antiapoptotic Bcl-2. To date, a total of 25 Bcl-2 related genes have been identified. Among them, Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, and Bcl-w are antiapoptotic; however, BAD, Bax, Bak, and Bcl2l11 are proapoptotic [3]. Hence, researchers should consider this important knowledge to avoid misunderstanding.