Kidneys' innate clock affects body's metabolic processes

An internal clock within the kidneys plays an important role in maintaining balance within the body, a new study has found.

The Circadian clock or the roughly 24-hour biological cycle help cells, tissues, organs, and whole organisms follow daily rhythms based on light-dark cycles as the earth rotates.

The findings showed that the daily fluctuations caused by the kidney's circadian clock have an important effect on the levels of various amino acids, lipids, and other components of blood in the body.

Also, in individuals who take medications, the kidney's circadian clock controls drug elimination from the body.

Further, the kidney's circadian clock also influences the duration of a drug's action and the effectiveness of the therapy in individuals who take medications.

By blocking kidney cells' expression of a gene that is critically involved in the circadian clock system, the team found that the clock is responsible for the temporal adaptation of kidney function to the light and dark phases of the day that correspond to activity and rest.

The findings are detailed in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

"We've shown that the circadian clock in the kidney plays an important role in different metabolic and homeostatic processes at both the intra-renal and systemic levels and is involved in drug disposition," said Dmitri Firsov from University of Lausanne, in Switzerland.