Human Kidney is a Target for Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection

Bo Diao; Chenhui Wang; Rongshuai Wang; Zeqing Feng; Yingjun Tan; Huiming Wang; Changsong Wang; Liang Liu; Ying Liu; Yueping Liu; Gang Wang; Zilin Yuan; Liang Ren; Yuzhang Wu; Yongwen Chen

The extents of tubular atrophy and interstitial disease are the strongest histological parameters which correlate with renal function and predict progression. To further analyze how SARS-CoV-2 affects renal function, we focused on analyzing renal tissue morphology from autopsies. H&E staining showed that acute renal tubular damage and lymphocyte infiltration was observed in all six cases during postmortem examinations, while the glomeruli were intact, except for some cases with slight glomerulosclerosis, suggesting that other conditions such as hypertension and diabetic nephropathy may have been involved in the pathogenesis (Figure 1) . It has been shown that the ACE-2 receptor of SARS-CoV-2 is highly expressed in renal tubules. 12, 16 We used immunohistochemistry to analyze the expression of viral NP antigen in situ in kidney tissues, and found that viral NP antigen was restricted to the renal tubular cells of the infected tissues (Figure 2) .