Potential Treatment for PKD

What it is:

PKD stands for Polycystic Kidney Disease, it’s a condition which effects some 12.5 million people worldwide. PKD is among the commonest life-threatening genetic diseases on the world. Those people who has PKD will grow kidney cysts gradually all through their life, affected organs can, after 40-50 years, reach the dimensions of footballs. It goes without saying that they can become a source of acute hurt and, ultimately, affected kidneys will yield to renal catastrophe, regardless of what. Eventually, a kidney transplant is the only way to save the patient.

For a few years, sufferers of PKD went undiagnosed and so the condition claimed a great the number of lives without ever being appropriately identified. Now, however, it is an worldwide known ailment and sufferers are closely monitored from an early age.

In November of 2012, doctors at the KU kidney institute in Kansas, USA, developed a drug called tolvaptan. The drug was found to slow the growth of cysts and also easing the loss of kidney function, this was a much-needed step in the right direction, but it is not a treatment.

For this year, things have been looking up even more. Scientists performing at Massachusetts For the General Hospital were in fact able to improve a viable rat kidney and transplant it into a living animal. Moreover of this, Dr. Xiaogang Li of the KU Kidney institute recently discovered that vitamin B3 can slow the growth of cysts; in fact, his team was able to completely restore kidney function in test mice with PKD. Now that is advancement.

Why we want it:

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

When can we expect it?

A bona-fide treatment may yet be decades away, but when regular vitamin shots can be used to control the disease itself, allowing patients to survive longer, healthier lives, then I’d say that we were definitely on the right track.

Drugs that control the condition can be available soon, yet. Large-scale Human trials have hinted that vitamin B3 is safe for widespread use. Which means it should be available to patients all over the world moderately soon.

Doctors eventually hope to be able to manage PKD within the womb, stopping the disease before it starts. That may, efficiently, represent a cure. Such technology is probably 10 years (or more) away, but we are getting there.

Cool Factor: 5/5

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

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