Circulating extracellular vesicles of patients with steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome have higher RAC1 and induce recapitulation of nephrotic syndrome phenotype in podocytes

Abstract

Up to now, the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the pathogenesis of steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome (NS) has not been studied. Here, we found that relapse NS EVs contain significantly increased active RAC1, induce enhanced podocyte motility, increase expression of RAC-GTP and phospho-p38 expression in vitro. These results suggest that plasma EVs are biologically active molecules in the pathogenesis of NS.