A new find by scientists at the Technion Institute–the world-class research university in the northern Israeli city of Haifa– holds new hope for the 40 million Americans who have end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). ESKD is what happens when chronic kidney disease progresses to the point where the only hope for the patient’s long-term survival is a kidney transplant — which is costly, dangerous to already ill patients, and only possible when there’s an available kidney that is compatible with the patient.
Not always good odds.
But the research team–led by Prof. Karl Skorecki–isolated a method of genetic screening that can identify those at high risk for kidney disease, thereby allowing clinicians to treat them before their kidneys ever get anywhere near the point of failing, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The team’s work, which is due to be published in the prestigious medical journal, is expected to lead to future research that might be able to identity to specific genetic glitch that leads to ESKD as well as help doctors understand how the kidneys gets irreversibly damaged — which may lead to better or new medical treatments for those who do develop the condition.
If Skorecki’s name sounds familiar to you, it may be because we wrote about his “hobby” back in November. Although trained as a specialist in treating the kidney, Skorecki taught himself about genealogy and made a big splash when:
…he showed that Jewish men who had been told by their fathers that they were of the priestly tribe shared the same type array of six chromosomal markers in their Y chromosomes. These patrilineal markers were found in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi kohanim, pointing to a common priestly tribe population origin before the Diaspora during the Roman Empire.
The kidney disease Skorecki’s team may be helping affects black and Hispanic Americans at twice the rate it affects Caucasians. About 5,000 Israelis suffer from it.
What do you think?