Ultimately, the common final pathway of any glomerular disease is podocyte effacement,
podocyte loss, and, eventually, glomerular scarring. There has been a long-standing debate
on the underlying mechanisms for podocyte depletion, ranging from necrosis and apoptosis
to detachment of viable cells from the glomerular basement membrane. However, this
debate still continues because additional pathways of programmed cell death have been
reported in recent years. Interestingly, viable podocytes can be isolated out of the urine of …