"This report demonstrated the strikingly high rates of familial clustering of the severest forms of kidney disease," he said. Patients with kidney disease due to diabetes were most likely to have close relatives with kidney disease, followed by those with kidney disease caused by high blood pressure.
Because of this clustering, "close relatives might be at increased risk for the presence of undetected chronic kidney disease or conditions that predispose to chronic kidney disease," Freedman said. "Periodically screening family members for chronic kidney disease and risk factors may be appropriate."
He said that chronic kidney disease has a long pre-clinical period, during which there are no symptoms, but when it can be easily diagnosed using blood and urine tests and treatment can be started.
"Primary care physicians need to be aware of this familial clustering and consider screening the close relatives of dialysis patients for silent kidney disease," said Freedman, who is the John H. Felts III, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Head of the Section on Nephrology.
Besides Freedman, other researchers included Scott Satko, M.D., from Wake Forest, Nataliya Volkova, M.P.H., J. Michael Soucie, Ph.D., Claudine Jurkovitz, M.D., and William McClellan, M.D., of Emory University, and Jenna Krisher, B.S., of ESRD Network 6/The Southeastern Kidney Council Inc., in Raleigh.
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Contact: Robert Conn
rconn@wfubmc.edu
336-716-4587
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
1-Nov-2005