The Eventual PKD Treatment

What it is:

PKD stands for Polycystic Kidney Disease, it is a precondition which effects some 12.5 million people worldwide. PKD is among the commonest life-threatening genetic disease in the world. A person who has PKD will spread kidney cysts slowly throughout their existence, affected organs can, after 40-50 years, reach the dimensions of footballs. It goes without saying they can become a source of severe hurt and, eventually, affected kidneys will yield to renal catastrophe, no matter what. Eventually, a kidney transplant may be the only way to save the patient.

For a few years, sufferers of PKD went undiagnosed and the condition claimed a great many lives without ever being properly discovered. Now, however, it’s an internationally accepted illness and sufferers are closely monitored from an early age.

In November of 2012, doctors in the KU kidney institute in Kansas, USA, developed a drug called tolvaptan. The drug was found to slow the growth of cysts as well as lessening the loss of kidney function, this was a much-needed step in the right direction, however it is not a cure.

This year, things has been looking up even further. Scientists functioning at Massachusetts For the General Hospital were in fact able to grow a viable rat kidney and transplant it right into a living animal. Furthermore to that, Dr. Xiaogang Li of the KU Kidney institute recently revealed that vitamin B3 can slow the expansion of cysts; in reality, his team was able to completely restore kidney use in test mice with PKD. Now that’s advancement.

Why we want it:

Because 12.5 million people around the world are suffering with that hereditary, life threatening disease, also, children with PKD are being born each day. A cure is required and it’s required now.

When can we expect it?

A bona-fide cure may yet be decades away, but if regular vitamin shots should be considered to regulate the condition itself, allowing patients to live longer, healthier lives, then I would say that we were definitely on the right path.

Drugs that control the illness can be available soon, though. Large-scale Human trials have confirmed that vitamin B3 is trustworthy for widespread use. This means that it should be available to patients throughout the world comparatively soon.

Doctors eventually hope to be able to treat PKD within the womb, stopping the disease before it starts. That may, effectively, constitute a cure. Such technology is likely a decade (or more) away, but we’re getting there.

Cool Factor: 5/5

Do not forget that scene in ‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’ where the crew of that Enterprise journey back in time to the mid 1980’s and Doc McCoy encounters an elderly Woman who needs kidney dialysis. Exploding in disbelief, the good doctor cries “what is this, the dark ages!?” before giving the Lady a pill that swiftly grows her a brand new kidney, much to her joy. That is where we could be within a couple of decades – ‘Star Trek’ technology. What is cooler than that?

Joining the NHS organ donor list is a way you may help this case, today. 

The Eventual PKD Treatment