EPO and chronic kidney disease: Roxadustat is a novel orally administered hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor that increases endogenous erythropoietin concentration through the stabilization of hypoxia inducible factor, which is achieved by inhibiting the activity of its pan-prolyl hydroxylase domain (6), and it has recently been approved for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) (7).