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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Jun 21.
Published in final edited form as: Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2009 Feb;133(2):201–216. doi: 10.1043/1543-2165-133.2.201

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Injured podocytes may take 4 different pathways. Under certain circumstances, injured podocytes undergo foot process effacement without significant change in podocyte number. When this occurs, the glomeruli generally appear normal on light microscopy (LM), as is the case of minimal change nephropathy (MCN). If injured podocytes enter apoptotic pathways, the number of podocytes per glomerulus decreases (podocytopenia). Podocyte death leads to focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS). If the injury occurs early in life, it may lead to developmental arrest. In this case, glomeruli maintain an immature appearance, as reflected by mesangial expansion and crowding of podocytes, which may express for proliferative activity. This phenomenon translates into the morphologic pattern of diffuse mesangial sclerosis (DMS). Instead of engaging apoptotic pathways, specific injurious events may stimulate podocyte dedifferentiation and proliferation. Morphologically, this phenomenon translates into collapsing glomerulopathy (CG).