ArticleKidney international2020
SARS-CoV-2 causes a specific dysfunction of the kidney proximal tubule.
Article in Kidney international, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 140 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
140 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 234 citations in OpenAlex.
- Safety evaluation of remdesivir administration in patients with severe renal impairment and coronavirus disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Pooled it
- Is the vitamin D status of patients with COVID-19 associated with reduced mortality? A systematic review and meta-analysis.Archives of endocrinology and metabolism · 2023Pooled it
- Acute and chronic kidney injury following COVID-19 infection and vaccination: a narrative review.European journal of translational myology · 2026Article
- Tubular Damage Biomarkers Are a Useful Tool for Identifying Early Renal Injury in Long COVID.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Early Changes in Renal Function as Predictors of In-Hospital Mortality in COVID-19 Patients.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Urinary Peptidomic Profiling In Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Case-Control Study.Proteomics · 2026Article
- Autoimmune reactions to ACE2 triggered by SARS-CoV-2 S protein and their histopathological consequences.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Liquid Biopsy-Multiomics Link Adhesion Pathway Dysregulation to Kidney Injury Severity.Kidney international reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Food and medicine homology: a potential nutritional intervention strategy for post-acute COVID-19 syndrome.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Review
- Time Course of Biochemical and Metabolic Parameters During and After COVID-19.Current medicinal chemistry · 2025Article
- Influenza A (H1N1) and COVID-19 Pneumonias: An Evaluation in the Light of New Hematologic Indices.Journal of inflammation research · 2025Article
- Plasma aldosterone is low in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and not associated with changes in serum potassium levels:Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Observational
- Febuxostat may decrease the incidence of COVID-19 infection among patients with gout: a retrospective cohort study.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Diagnosis, Severity, and Prognosis from Potential Biomarkers of COVID-19 in Urine: A Review of Clinical and Omics Results.Metabolites · 2024Review
- Kidney damage associated with COVID-19: from the acute to the chronic phase.Renal failure · 2024Review
- The Role of Dental-derived Stem Cell-based Therapy and Their Derived Extracellular Vesicles in Post-COVID-19 Syndrome-induced Tissue Damage.Stem cell reviews and reports · 2024Review
- SARS-CoV-2 infection causes a decline in renal megalin expression and affects vitamin D metabolism in the kidney of K18-hACE2 mice.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Kidney Outcomes and Trajectories of Tubular Injury and Function in Critically Ill Patients With and Without COVID-19.Critical care explorations · 2024Article
- Prospective Multicenter Study on Early Proximal Tubular Injury in COVID-19-Related Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.Kidney international reports · 2024Article
80 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
21 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is commonly associated with kidney damage, and the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for SARS-CoV-2 is highly expressed in the proximal tubule cells. Whether patients with COVID-19 present specific manifestations of proximal tubule dysfunction remains unknown. To test this, we examined a cohort of 49 patients requiring hospitalization in a large academic hospital in Brussels, Belgium. There was evidence of proximal tubule dysfunction in a subset of patients with COVID-19, as attested by low-molecular-weight proteinuria (70-80%), neutral aminoaciduria (46%), and defective handling of uric acid (46%) or phosphate (19%). None of the patients had normoglycemic glucosuria. Proximal tubule dysfunction was independent of pre-existing comorbidities, glomerular proteinuria, nephrotoxic medications or viral load. At the structural level, kidneys from patients with COVID-19 showed prominent tubular injury, including in the initial part of the proximal tubule, with brush border loss, acute tubular necrosis, intraluminal debris, and a marked decrease in the expression of megalin in the brush border. Transmission electron microscopy identified particles resembling coronaviruses in vacuoles or cisternae of the endoplasmic reticulum in proximal tubule cells. Among features of proximal tubule dysfunction, hypouricemia with inappropriate uricosuria was independently associated with disease severity and with a significant increase in the risk of respiratory failure requiring invasive mechanical ventilation using Cox (adjusted hazard ratio 6.2, 95% CI 1.9-20.1) or competing risks (adjusted sub-distribution hazard ratio 12.1, 95% CI 2.7-55.4) survival models. Thus, our data establish that SARS-CoV-2 causes specific manifestations of proximal tubule dysfunction and provide novel insights into COVID-19 severity and outcome.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.