As a consequence of various intracellular organelle stresses (like mitochondrial stress or endoplasmic reticulum stress),GDF-15 expression can be increased in a variety of tissues and cell types to take part in a variety of pathophysiological processes [35, 36], such as heart failure, chronic kidney disease, pulmonary fibrosis, or cancer [37–40]. Here, GDF15 is linked to chronic kidney disease.