Heddwen L Brooks

Photo of Heddwen L Brooks

Heddwen L Brooks

Professor, Physiology
Professor, Medicine
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Professor, Physiological Sciences - GIDP
Associate Professor, Pharmacology
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Physiology
Department Affiliations
Physiology
Contact
(520) 626-7702
brooksh@email.arizona.edu

Research Interest

Dr. Brooks is a renal physiologist and has developed microarray technology to address in vivo signaling pathways involved in the hormonal regulation of renal function. Current areas of research in the Brooks Laboratory are focused on importance of sex differences in the onset of postmenopausal hypertension and diabetic kidney disease and identifying new therapies for polycystic kidney disease and lithium-induced nephropathy.

Publications

Ho, H. T., Chung, S. K., Law, J. W., Ko, B. C., Tam, S. C., Brooks, H. L., Knepper, M. A., & Chung, S. S. (2000). Aldose reductase-deficient mice develop nephrogenic diabetes insipidus. Molecular and cellular biology, 20(16), 5840-6.

Aldose reductase (ALR2) is thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of various diseases associated with diabetes mellitus, such as cataract, retinopathy, neuropathy, and nephropathy. However, its physiological functions are not well understood. We developed mice deficient in this enzyme and found that they had no apparent developmental or reproductive abnormality except that they drank and urinated significantly more than their wild-type littermates. These ALR2-deficient mice exhibited a partially defective urine-concentrating ability, having a phenotype resembling that of nephrogenic diabetes insipidus.

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