Skeletal muscle atrophy is an important clinical characteristic of chronic kidney disease (CKD); however, at present, the therapeutic approaches to muscle atrophy induced by CKD are still at an early stage of development. Resveratrol is used to attenuate muscle atrophy in other experimental models, but the effects on a CKD model are largely unknown. Here, we showed that resveratrol prevented an increase in MuRF1 expression and attenuated muscle atrophy in vivo model of CKD. We also found that phosphorylation of NF-kappa B was inhibited at the same time. Dexamethasone-induced MuRF1 upregulation was significantly attenuated in C2C12 myotubes by resveratrol in vitro, but this effect on C2C12 myotubes was abrogated by a knockdown of NF-kappa B, suggesting that the beneficial effect of resveratrol was NF-kappa B dependent. Our findings provide novel information about the ability of resveratrol to prevent or treat muscle atrophy induced by CKD. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.