Figure 1.

Progress of acute kidney injury in critical illness-associated oxidative stress. Critically ill patients in intensive care units suffer from multifactorial disorders that are added up against the potentiality of regulatory mechanisms to maintain homeostasis, leading to further imbalance in favor of oxidative stress generation through multiple pathogenetic pathways. Once this cataract leads to renal damage with the form of acute kidney injury, the prolonged exposure to oxidative stress environment leads to an uneventful outcome that ranges from chronic kidney disease to death. ROS: reactive oxygen species; NO: nitric oxide; DAMPs: danger-associated molecular patterns.