Kidney-placenta crosstalk in health and disease.

Organ crosstalk allows the interaction between systems to adapt to a constant changing environment, maintaining homeostasis. The process of placentation and the new hormonal environment during pregnancy trigger physiological changes that modulate kidney function to control extracellular volume, acid-base balance and filtration of metabolic waste products. The bidirectional communication means that acute or chronic dysfunction of one organ can compromise the other.

Kidney-liver pathophysiological crosstalk: its characteristics and importance.

The kidney plays a crucial role in controlling the blood volume and pressure, electrolyte and acid-base balance, erythropoietin secretion, as well as renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system activity. All these renal activities have important repercussion in the organism, explaining why morbidity and mortality rates are high in patients with significant renal dysfunction. In this sense, there are renal-induced liver damages in acute kidney injury, as well as liver-induced renal damages in hepatic disease.