Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
Patients with chronic renal failure develop a cardiomyopathy characterized by marked diastolic dysfunction and left ventricular hypertrophy. Interestingly, they also have substantial increases in the circulating concentrations of digitalis like substances. Digitalis like substances produce reactive oxygen species as part of the signal cascade induced by binding to the sodium pump and patients, and this signal cascade appears to induce hypertrophy of cardiac myocytes grown in culture. Also, patients with chronic renal failure develop an oxidant stress state without a known mechanism. From these data, we propose that it is these digitalis like substances which cause cardiomyopathy of renal failure as well as the systemic oxidant stress state.