Vitamin D receptor activation may offer renoprotective benefits in diabetic nephropathy through multiple pathways.
May warrant targeted trials of vitamin D receptor activation in diabetic nephropathy; leaves open clinical translation from mechanistic data alone.
OBJECTIVE: To review the advances of studies on vitamin D receptor and its role in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy. DATA SOURCES: A comprehensive search of the PubMed literatures without restriction on the publication date was carried out using keywords such as vitamin D receptor and diabetic nephropathy. STUDY SELECTION: Articles related to vitamin D receptor and diabetic nephropathy were selected and carefully analyzed. RESULTS: The ligands as well as construction and tissue distribution of vitamin D receptor were summarized. Pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy was analyzed. The mechanisms underlying the renoprotective role of vitamin D receptor including inhibition of renin-angiotensin system, anti-inflammation, anti-fibrosis and the reduction of proteinuria were reviewed. Mounting evidences from animal and clinical studies have suggested that vitamin D therapy has beneficial effects on the renal systems and the underlying renoprotective mechanisms of the vitamin D receptor-mediated signaling pathways is a hot research topic. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that vitamin D receptor has a great potential for preventing the progression of diabetic nephropathy via multiple mechanisms.
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Guan et al. (2014) studied this question.
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