Washington University in St. Louis (WU)
My primary research interest is to elucidate mechanisms that cause ill-understood detrimental effects kidney disease on the brain. My current project studies remote brain dysfunction following acute kidney injury. Particularly, I am interested in hippocampal pathology and neurological complications of cardiovascular and kidney disease. Hippocampus is a brain region responsible for multiple important behavioral functions including learning and memory, memory retrieval, and mood-related functions like anxiety and depression, brain capacities affected e.g. in delirium or neurocognitive dysfunction. Cardiovascular and kidney disease carry a high risk of acute and chronic neurologic dysfunction, but the underpinning mechanisms are still unexplained. My novel findings implicate circulating
osteopontin-induced monocytic neuroinflammation in the hippocampus as a driver of acute and chronic neurological dysfunction after acute kidney injury.