Family history may be misleading in the diagnosis of Dent's disease.

The rare Dent's disease manifests with medullary nephrocalcinosis, nephrolithiasis, hypercalciuria, low molecular weight proteinuria and other tubular dysfunctions, rickets or osteomalacia, and renal failure, in various combinations. It is a recessive X-linked condition. Clinicians consider family history a fundamental pointer to its diagnosis, but this is not invariably the case as clearly pointed out by the two reported cases.

In search of adult renal stem cells.

The therapeutic potential of adult stem cells in the treatment of chronic degenerative diseases has becoming increasingly evident over the last few years. Significant attention is currently being paid to the development of novel treatments for acute and chronic kidney diseases too. To date, promising sources of stem cells for renal therapies include adult bone marrow stem cells and the kidney precursors present in the early embryo. Both cells have clearly demonstrated their ability to differentiate into the kidney's specialized structures. Adult renal stem cells have yet to be identified, but the papilla is where the stem cell niche is probably located. Now we need to isolate and characterize the fraction of papillary cells that constitute the putative renal stem cells. Our growing understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms behind kidney regeneration and repair processes - together with a knowledge of the embryonic origin of renal cells - should induce us, however, to bear in mind that in the kidney, as in other mesenchymal tissues, the need for a real stem cell compartment might be less important than the phenotypic flexibility of tubular cells. Thus, by displaying their plasticity during kidney maintenance and repair, terminally differentiated cells may well function as multipotent stem cells despite being at a later stage of maturation than adult stem cells. One of the major tasks of Regenerative Medicine will be to disclose the molecular mechanisms underlying renal tubular plasticity and to exploit its biological and therapeutic potential.

[Dent's disease: hereditary nephrolithiasis related to defective tubular endocytosis processes]. / La malattia di Dent: una nefrolitiasi ereditaria da difetti dei processi di endocitosi tubulare.

Dent's disease, a X-linked hypercalciuric nephrolithiasis, is caused by mutations of the CLCN5 gene. The disease is characterised by low molecular weight proteinuria with variable presence of hypercalciuria, hyperphosphaturia, nephrocalcinosis, and kidney stones. CLCN5 encodes a chloride channel belonging to the voltage-gated chloride channel family, which is predominantly expressed in the endosomes of proximal tubular cells. By shunting the current of electrogenic H+-ATPase, ClC-5 is crucial for efficient acidification of renal endosomes. As shown in knock-out mouse models, the ClC-5 loss of function causes severe impairment of receptor-mediated endocytosis, as well as the endocytotic retrieval of plasma membrane proteins including megalin. In a minority of patients with classical Dent's disease, the analysis of CLCN5 coding sequences failed to identify causative mutations. It is conceivable that mutations in the 5' upstream regulatory regions could impair the correct processing and translation of CLCN5. The complexity of its promoter region seems to support this hypothesis. Molecular diagnosis of Dent's disease is now available; since the risk of developing renal insufficiency in adult life is elevated for this type of nephrolithiasis, the correct diagnosis could potentially modify the natural history of the disease by preventing the evolution towards uraemia.