Stopping Ceramide Damage

This image shows a proximal tubule of the kidney. These tubules are highly metabolically active, their job being to reabsorb water and other vital substances (sodium, glucose and more) back into the blood as well as to secrete waste products. They are also, generally speaking, the most susceptible parts of the kidney when it comes to injury – caused by dehydration, infection, and heart issues, among other things. Urinary ceramides – a type of lipid found in the tubule cell membranes – are early markers of such damage and, it turns out, the cause of it too. The tubule cells are jam packed with mitochondria to meet their sizeable energy requirements and a build-up of ceramides directly impairs mitochondrial morphology (shape) and function. Importantly, when mice were given a ceramide-lowering drug and subjected to kidney-damaging conditions, the animals were protected from renal injury and had near-normal looking kidneys.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Luis Cedeño-Rosario, from work by Rebekah J. Nicholson & Luis Cedeño-Rosario and colleagues
• Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology, University of Utah College of Health, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Cell Metabolism, January 2026