Review Article Chemokines as Potential Markers in Pediatric Renal Diseases

Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Glomerular diseases and obstructive uropathies are the two most frequent causes of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children. Recently, biomarkers have become a focus of clinical research as potentially useful diagnostic tools in pediatric renal diseases. Among several putative biomarkers, chemokines emerge as promising molecules since they play relevant roles in the pathophysiology of pediatric renal diseases. The evaluation of these inflammatory mediators might help in the management of diverse renal diseases in children and the detection of patients at high risk to develop CKD.The aim of this paper is to revise general aspects of chemokines and the potential link between chemokines and the most common pediatric renal diseases by including experimental and clinical evidence. 1. Chemokines: General Concepts Chemokines constitute a large family of low molecular-weight cytokines whose main action is the recruitment of leukocyte subsets under homeostatic conditions and inflam-mation; the word “chemokine ” is the contraction of th