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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Nephrol. Dec 25, 2025; 14(4): 112066
Published online Dec 25, 2025. doi: 10.5527/wjn.v14.i4.112066
Published online Dec 25, 2025. doi: 10.5527/wjn.v14.i4.112066
Gut microbiota-derived trimethylamine N-oxide exacerbates diabetic nephropathy by promoting renal fibrosis
Yue-Juan Song, Bo Yang, Qiang-Sheng Feng, Fei-Fei Ma, Bang Xing, Xi-Liang Bin, Xiao-Qin Ha, Clinical Laboratory, The 940th Hospital of Joint Logistics Support Force of People’s Liberation Army, Lanzhou 730050, Gansu Province, China
Author contributions: Song YJ has primary responsibility for the final content; Song YJ, Yang B, and Ha XQ conceived and designed the research; Song YJ and Yang B wrote the manuscript; Feng QS and Bin XL analyzed the data; Ma FF and Xing B collected the data; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, No. 2021yxky056.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of 940th Hospital of the Logistics Support Force, approval No. 2023KYL419.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Data sharing statement: All data included in this study are available upon request by contacting the corresponding author.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Xiao-Qin Ha, Chief Physician, Clinical Laboratory, The 940th Hospital of Joint Logistics Support Force of People’s Liberation Army, No. 333 Binhe Middle Road, Lanzhou 730050, Gansu Province, China. songyuejuan410@163.com
Received: July 17, 2025
Revised: August 18, 2025
Accepted: November 21, 2025
Published online: December 25, 2025
Processing time: 159 Days and 19.4 Hours
Revised: August 18, 2025
Accepted: November 21, 2025
Published online: December 25, 2025
Processing time: 159 Days and 19.4 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is characterized by significant renal dysfunction and gut microbiota dysbiosis, which enhances the microbiota’s capacity to produce trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). In Zucker diabetic fatty rats, elevated TMAO levels were associated with aggravated renal injury, fibrosis, and upregulated P-smad3 expression. Fecal microbiota transplantation from DN rats further increased TMAO production, confirming TMAO as a key microbiota-derived mediator in DN progression.