Apoptosis of the podocytes was evaluated 48 hafter their exposure to the various treatments.Briefly, podocytes were trypsinized and centri-fuged at 1000 rpm for 5 min at room tempera-ture. Next, 1× binding buffer was added to theprecipitate followed by Annexin V Fluoresceinisothiocyanate (FITC) stock solution (AnnexinV-FITC Apoptosis Detection Kit, Sigma). Cellswere incubated for 10 min at 4°C. Propidiumiodide (PI) was added immediately before flowcytometric analysis. A total of 20,000 cells persample were employed for flow cytometry an-alysis. Flow cytometric data were used to de-termine the percentage of cells undergoingapoptosis.