Does indoxyl sulfate have direct effects on cardiac fibroblasts and myocytes?
Indoxyl sulfate exerts direct pro-fibrotic, pro-hypertrophic, and pro-inflammatory effects on cardiac cells, highlighting a potential therapeutic target for heart failure with concomitant chronic kidney disease.
This study has, for the first time, demonstrated that IS has pro-fibrotic, pro-hypertrophic, and pro-inflammatory effects, indicating that IS might play an important role in adverse cardiac remodelling mediated via activation of the p38 MAPK, p42/44 MAPK, and NFkappaB pathways. Targeting reduction of IS and/or the pathways it activates may represent a novel therapeutic approach to the management of CHF with concomitant CKD.
Lekawanvijit et al. (2010) studied this question.