A group led by Drs. Erwin P. Böttinger of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Matthias Kretzler at the University of Michigan have established novel markers of kidney disease progression. Their report can be found in the June 2009 issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

Annabel Ferriman, an editor at the BMJ, gives a frank first person account of her journey through the "protracted" and sometimes "frustrating" process of becoming a live kidney donor to her friend, Ray, who had been suffering from polycystic kidney disease for eight years.

Reducing early blockages in bloodstream access for kidney failure treatment does not increase the likelihood that the access will function adequately for long-term treatments, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Results were published May 14, 2008, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The unwanted activation of an important cell-signaling pathway may play a role in two kidney problems that are major causes of end-stage renal disease, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found. Their research, which opens up a novel approach for treating kidney failure, is described in the March issue of Nature Medicine.

The general public is not sufficiently aware that chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a serious and progressive medical condition. It remains under-diagnosed and under-treated. Understandably so, since in its early stages CKD is often asymptomatic, making individuals with the disease and their health-care providers unaware of its "silent" yet threatening presence.

Some patients with kidney disease aren’t referred to kidney specialists in time to delay disease progression and improve their prognosis for a variety of reasons, according to researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

Universal access to health care might help to overcome racial and ethnic barriers to treatment for kidney disease, suggest two studies in the March 2008 issue of Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered how low-oxygen conditions can worsen chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Central venous catheters are commonly used to provide permanent hemodialysis for patients with serious kidney disease. One technique, inserting a catheter through large vessels, has been commonly used worldwide in recent years.

Patients with end-stage kidney disease treated with high doses of folic acid and B vitamins to lower homocysteine levels did not have improvement in survival or reductions in the incidence of vascular events, according to a study in the September 12 issue of JAMA.

Scientists have discovered that a lipid known to protect the heart from inflammation and to cause skin allergic reactions also reduces inflammation of the kidneys. The discovery could help devise new ways of treating inflammatory kidney diseases.

A relatively new, minimally invasive treatment was 93 percent successful in eradicating malignant kidney tumors, according to a recent study conducted by researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC.