Why are women’s kidneys more resistant?

The female kidneys they are more resistant than males to diseases and injuries, but until now it was not known why. A new experimental study has found that the key lies in testosterone, and that reducing its levels can help improve kidney disease.

This is reflected in research with mice conducted by scientists from University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine published today in development Cell Magazine, it is stated in the press release of this university.

Because female kidneys are the strongest, the researchers wanted to see when and how gene activity in the kidneys is “feminized” or “masculinized.”

In this way, they identified more than 1,000 genes with different levels of activity in the kidneys of male and female mice, particularly different in the renal filtering unit that deals with the reabsorption of nutrients such as glucose or amino acids.

These differences in ability between the sexes appeared when the mice entered puberty, and became more pronounced when they reached sexual maturity.

To understand why this happens, the researchers used two strategies: castrating male mice before puberty to reduce their natural testosterone levels and removing cellular sensors known as androgen receptors that respond to male sex hormones.

At the same time, they put other male mice on three months of caloric restriction, an indirect way of lowering testosterone.

The conclusion reached is that it is decreased testosteronein one way or another, it helps in the recovery of certain types of kidney injuries in mice.

To test whether the same genes are involved in sex-related differences in human kidneys, the researchers analyzed a limited number of donor kidneys and biopsies. male and female.

As for the genes that differed in their activity according to sex, they observed a modest overlap of human genes with those of mice.

The scientists conducted similar experiments with the mouse liver, another organ that shows sex-related differences, but found that they arose independently during evolution.