Author: Dr Mei Zhu Peng University of California San Francisco 2008-07-28
Introduction
Introduction
According the recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES III), kidney disease is on the rise in the United States (1). This trend is of concern for a number of reasons. Not only are people with kidney disease at higher risk for heart disease and cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and stroke, but many who have kidney disease are without symptoms and so are not aware that they have the disease; it is often diagnosed with routine blood and urine tests. Moreover, untreated kidney disease can progress to advanced chronic kidney disease, which requires dialysis or kidney transplantation.