Renal - A Single Molecule May Change the Future of Chronic Disease

Are you at risk for heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, or early death?

There’s a long list of tests, measurements, and standards health professionals use to evaluate your risk. But it’s not a perfect science, and each unique condition often requires its own set of testing and evaluation protocols.

What about renal disease? An estimated 14 percent of adults in the U.S. are living with some form of renal disease. The best treatment option is a combination of medication and lifestyle changes.

When that’s not enough, a kidney transplant or dialysis treatment may be the only other options.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if it was possible to predict your risk factors for renal disease and other chronic conditions, long before you were sick, and intervene sooner? That might sound like something for a science fiction wish list, but researchers are closer to reaching an agreement on what can be learned from a little known molecule named soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR).

Researchers believe measuring suPAR may be a highly effective way to identify inflammation long before damage to kidneys and other organs occur. It’s possible to control a rise in suPAR, and that may be a critical finding that will help change the future of chronic disease.

If you have renal disease, you more than like have elevated levels of suPAR. And even if your condition ultimately required a kidney transplant, evidence exists that elevated suPAR would cause your body to attack and damage the new organ.

Until suPAR protocols are established to help patients, medication and lifestyle habits are still your best options to manage renal disease. And that includes limiting the amount of sodium, potassium, and phosphorus you consume, and keeping protein intake low. That might sound like a complicated diet, but it doesn’t have to be.

Check out our selection of Renal-Friendly meals all made from fresh ingredients, that you can prepare in minutes.