[Pathomechanisms of podocyte injury in diabetic nephropathy and interventional effects of Chinese herbal medicine].

Podocyte injury is closely related to proteinuria in the progress of diabetic nephropathy(DN). The pathological characters of podocyte injury mainly refer to the change of podocyte form and function, including foot process effacement, reduction of podocyte number and density, podocyte apoptosis, podocyte epithelial-mesenchymal transdifferentiation(EMT)and podocyte hypertrophy. These pathological damages are controlled by multiple signaling pathways in the kidney, such as mammalian target of rapamycin(mTOR)/autophagy pathway, transforming growth factor(TGF)-β1 pathway and Notch pathway. For podocyte injuries induced by high glucose or in murine models of DN, some Chinese herbal medicine(CHM)extracts, such as multiglycoside of Tripterygium wilfordii(GTW), triptolide(TP), astragaloside IV(AS-IV), astragalus polysaccharide(APS)and Panax notoginseng saponins(PNS), have the protective effects in vivo or in vitro. The preliminary studies in China showed that GTW improves podocyte injury in the DN model rats probably through regulating the activity of mTORC1 signaling pathway in the kidney. Therefore, it is the developmental direction for the further study to clarify the interventional effects of CHM based on podocyte injury-related signaling pathway in DN. Copyright© by the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association.