In the spirit of National Kidney Month, we are listening this week to a podcast from the Diabetes Daily Web site on the causes of diabetic kidney disease.
The podcast is an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Schelling, an expert on diabetic kidney disease who is looking into genetic factors that may predispose people with diabetes to kidney disease. According to Dr. Schelling, diabetic kidney disease tends to cluster in families, though not to as great an extent as do many genetic conditions. That means that there may be several different genes that contribute to an increased risk of diabetic kidney disease. He discusses the types of studies researchers use to identify these genes.
Environmental factors, such as blood glucose and blood pressure levels, also play a large role in the risk for diabetic kidney disease, and Dr. Schelling discusses how environmental and genetic factors may work together to raise (or lower) people’s risk for kidney disease. The podcast also touches on what steps a person with diabetes can take to reduce the risk of kidney disease or slow its progression.
This podcast is the second installment in a planned series of podcasts on the Diabetes Daily Web site. The first podcast, on the cellular causes of diabetes complications, can be found here.
This blog entry was written by Assistant Editor David Golann.
