Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: kidney + damage + risk  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)

Wall Street Journal For the Meningococcal Vaccine Wall Street Journal - Melanie survived -- but only after three months in intensive care with skin grafts, two months of rehab, a kidney transplant and amputations of both legs ... Old Wives' Tales: Fact Or Fiction? CBS News, NY - ... 16 ounces or more daily (whether diet or regular) doubles your risk of chronic kidney disease, according to a recent NIH study of more than 900 people. ... A Practical "ABCDE" Approach to the Metabolic Syndrome RedOrbit, TX - The metabolic syndrome comprises a cluster of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus that are due to abdominal obesity and ... Sequenom and SensiGen Expand Global Alliance MarketWatch - Jul 30, 2008 Current testing modalities are unable to detect these processes before Stage 3, at which point extensive and irreversible kidney damage has occurred. ...SQNM Surgical side effects cut with robotics CNN - The robot-controlled scalpel works delicately around the nerves and blood vessels in the pelvic area, vastly reducing the risk of damage that can lead to ... Learning to live with lupus CNN - Aug 4, 2008 Before effective therapies were developed, the disease was fatal more often, usually from overwhelming infection and kidney failure. ... (7/29) Kidney disease linked to dementia NephrOnline, AZ - Jul 31, 2008 More advanced stages of kidney disease were associated with even higher risk of poor mental functioning. Even those with near-normal kidney function were at ... Future imperfect Nashua Telegraph, NH - Aug 3, 2008 The new procedure maintains the same cure rate while reducing the risk of brain damage and future learning problems. Tragically, in trying to walk the ... Washington Post Kidney Disease Poses a Big Challenge, but Dialysis Gives Me Hope ... Washington Post, United States - Jul 21, 2008 Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, vascular disease or a family history of kidney disease puts a person at risk for kidney problems, according to ... Popular Science How Safe Is Tupperware? Popular Science, NY - ... has been associated with skin, eye and respiratory irritation, depression, fatigue, compromised kidney function, and central nervous system damage. ...TUP

People with kidney damage are prone to a chain reaction that increases their risk of heart problems, the leading cause of death among kidney patients, according to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.

Researchers hope the findings, which will appear in the April issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, will create new possibilities for treating kidney patients suffering from heart-related problems.

In a study using mice, researchers followed the chain reaction: Kidney damage leads to weakening of the skeleton, which leads to increased phosphorous in the blood. The higher phosphorous levels are linked to vascular calcification ? a stiffening of the smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels.

The vascular calcification leads to enlargement of one of the heart’s four chambers, and that creates increased risk of congestive heart failure, heart attack and other cardiac problems.

Researchers treated mice with an experimental medication that alleviates skeletal weakening brought on by kidney damage. Those mice had normal phosphorous levels and decreased signs of vascular calcification.

"We already have treatments available that can control phosphorous levels in the blood, and those should be very helpful for kidney patients," said Dr. Keith Hruska, senior investigator of the study and a professor of nephrology.

Dr. David Warnock, director of the division of nephrology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and president of the National Kidney Foundation, called the study "a very exciting development in our understanding of the relationship between chronic kidney disease and heart disease.

"We know from large-scale population studies that the severity of kidney disease predicts cardiovascular events," he said. "The worse your kidney function is, the greater the chance of a cardiovascular event."

Hruska and other researchers have discovered links between the skeleton and kidney. He said hormones made in the kidney regulate activity in the skeleton, while skeletal hormones regulate activity in the kidney.

Hruska last year showed that injections of bone morphogenetic protein-7 (BMP-7) could prevent bone weakening in mice whose kidneys had been damaged or removed.

Researchers in the new study worked with a mouse model of metabolic syndrome, a condition that is increasing in both adults and children and one that also is associated with higher risks of diabetes and heart disease. The condition is common for patients with chronic kidney disease, with symptoms such as obesity, high blood pressure and insulin resistance.

Mice develop the syndrome both because of genetic modification and a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet.

Researchers simulated chronic kidney disease by damaging or removing part of the kidney, leading to shutdown of cells that normally tear down and rebuild bones. The result was vascular calcification.

Under normal circumstances, the body takes minerals like calcium and phosphorous from the bloodstream and deposits them in bones during bone reconstruction. Researchers suspected that with those processes shut down, the levels of minerals in the bloodstream would increase, creating pressure to deposit them somewhere else.

The changed smooth muscle cells can put minerals outside their membranes, researchers said, decreasing the flexibility of blood vessels and making the heart work harder.

"Vascular stiffness happens to patients with end-stage kidney failure when they go on dialysis, and it leads to many dangerous cardiovascular complications," Hruska said.

Hruska said injection of BMP-7 stopped vascular calcification. In another group of mice, researchers injected a substance that binds to compounds with phosphorous but has no effect on the skeleton. That substance also stopped vascular calcification, indicating that phosphorous was the key link, researchers said.

"The connection that Dr. Hruska has come up with BMP-7 is very exciting and very intriguing and opens a new therapeutic approach to treating these issues," Warnock said.