Prenatal Inflammatory Exposure Predisposes Offspring to Chronic Kidney Diseases Via the Activation of the eIF2α-ATF4 Pathway

It has recently become more recognized that renal diseases in adults can originate from adverse intrauterine (maternal) environmental exposures. Previously, we found that prenatal lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposure can result in chronic renal inflammation, which leads to renal damage in older offspring rats. To test whether prenatal inflammatory exposure predisposes offspring to renal damage, a mouse model of oral adenine consumption-induced chronic kidney disease (CKD) was applied to offspring from prenatal LPS-treated mothers (offspring-pLPS) and age-matched control offspring of prenatal saline-treated mothers (offspring-pSaline). We found that offspring-pLPS mice presented with more severe renal collagen deposition and renal dysfunction after 4 weeks of adenine consumption than sex- and treatment-matched offspring-pSaline controls. To illustrate the underlying molecular mechanism, we subjected offspring-pLPS and offspring-pSaline kidneys to genome-wide transcriptomic analysis. Bioinformatic analysis of the Sequencing data, together with further experimental confirmation, revealed a strong activation of the PERK-eIF2α-ATF4-mediated unfolded protein response (UPR) in offspring-pLPS kidneys, which likely contributed to the CKD predisposition seen in offspring-pLPS mice. More importantly, the specific eIF2α-ATF4 signaling inhibitor ISIRB was able to prevent adenine-induced CKD in the offspring-pLPS mice. Our findings suggest that the eIF2α-ATF4-mediated UPR, but not PERK, is likely the major disease-causing pathway in prenatal inflammatory exposure-induced CKD predisposition. Our study also suggests that targeting this signaling pathway is a potentially promising approach for CKD treatment.

ATF4; ISIRB; adenine; chronic kidney diseases; prenatal LPS exposure; unfolded protein response.