LGALS3 and chronic kidney disease: Elevated serum Gal-3 levels are associated with an increased risk of developing CKD in individuals from the Framingham Heart Study Cohort (Kannel et al. 1979; O'Seaghdha et al. 2013), and are inversely correlated with the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) in patients with chronic heart failure (Tang et al. 2011).