The Lack of Funding for Chronic Kidney Disease Research is Not an Outlier

In this commentary, scientists note the paucity of funding for chronic kidney disease research, given the widespread suffering and death caused by this presently incurable condition. This and many other areas of medicine are seen as solved problems by the powers that be simply because there is some form of treatment, even palliative treatment, in widespread use. That the treatment does little and many people die doesn't appear to motivate those who could fund progress. There is no sense of urgency and little sense of need. We might make the same comments in the case of atherosclerosis, a condition many consider to be adequately treated and under control, due to the existence of statins and similar drugs that lower LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream, despite the fact that these treatments only somewhat reduce mortality, and that atherosclerosis still kills 27% of our species at the present time. We could indeed make much the same argument for many other primarily age-related conditions.

The uptake of the current concept of chronic kidney disease (CKD) by the public, physicians and health authorities is low. Physicians still mix up CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or kidney failure. In a recent manuscript, only 23% of participants in a cohort of persons with CKD had been diagnosed by their physicians as having CKD while 29% has a diagnosis of cancer and 82% had a diagnosis of hypertension. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%.

A prevalent view is that for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is "solved" by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, the main burden of CKD is accelerated aging and all-cause and cardiovascular premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal COVID-19 and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Moreover, men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality which is 10-100-fold higher than similar age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by around 40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth global cause of death by 2040 and the second cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when 1 in 4 Spaniards will have CKD.

However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded CIBER network research structure in Spain. Leading Spanish kidney researchers aim to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true. However, only the highest level of research funding through the CIBER will allow to adequately address the issue before it is too late.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nefro.2021.09.004

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