Understanding how our kidneys absorb protein from urine should give medical researchers more ammunition to fight skyrocketing kidney disease in diabetics.
A team of University of Queensland researchers led by Dr Philip Poronnik, a senior lecturer in the School of Biomedical Sciences, is unravelling the molecular processes in the kidney which retrieves proteins.
Kidneys filter about 180 litres of blood a day, removing waste products from the blood for excretion into urine.
During this process, small quantities of serum proteins are lost and need to be reabsorbed.
“When our kidneys become damaged, the filters become leaky,” Dr Poronnik said.
“More protein enters the kidney from the blood and the kidney can no longer reabsorb the protein.”
This leads to proteinuria, excess protein in the urine, usually the first sign of kidney malfunction.
“It is known from many studies that lowering the amount of protein in the urine reduces the likelihood of developing progressive kidney failure.”
Once the molecular mechanisms were understood, researchers could work out what goes wrong in diabetes and find ways to reduce the damage caused by excess protein, he said.
Diabetes is one of the most common causes of kidney disease affecting Australians and the diabetic kidney disease is set to increase dramatically in the next two decades.
But there would be no short-term cures from his research.
“We are making new inroads into understanding how the kidney simply performs its functions.”