Polycystic Nephritis: Cause, Symptoms, Test, Treatment, Prognosis

Polycystic Nephritis, Polycystic Kidney Disease as its alternative name, is a typical genetic kidney problem. In people with this disease, countless cysts grow up and develop from the kidneys.

Cause

As mentioned above Polycystic Nephritis is genetic kidney disease. Thereby, the disease runs into families. Apart from genetic factor, genetic mutation is rare to be another cause.

However, not every one with PKD genes will develop into the kidney disease. Some factors do trigger the development of renal cysts, including cysts in other organs (such as, liver, pancreas etc.), diverticula of the colon, aortic aneurysms and brain aneurysms.

Symptoms

Symptoms may occur in the childhood or adulthood. The common type of the disease is ADPKD which always shows symptoms until middle age. Another type ARPKD usually develops in one’s childhood when symptoms occur. In fact, a great deal of people does not show symptoms even after 30s.

If symptoms occur, you may feel:

● Abdominal pain, flank pain, sides pain

● Frequent urination, especially at night

● Blood in urine

● High blood pressure (does high blood pressure leads to cyst rupture?)

● Increased size of abdomen

● Kidney stones

Test

Some tests are helpful to find and detect the size and number of kidney cysts and the kidney damages condition. To make a diagnosis, your doctor may suggest the following tests:

● Computerized Tomography Scan (CT)

● Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scan (MRI)

● Ultrasound Examination

Treatment

Treatment for Polycystic Nephritis is dealing with the symptoms, complications and root causes.
Anti-hypertensive Medication. Hypertension is an important symptoms which aggravates the kidney damages quickly which usually onsets before your age of 30. Common medications for elevated blood pressure include ACE, ARB and herbs.

Surgery. Surgery is common method for some patients. It is used to drain one or several larger cysts. If necessary, surgery also can be remove one or both polycystic kidneys.

Chinese herbs. Chinese herb is a conservative treatment which shrinks renal cyst and lower high blood pressure naturally.

Immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is not a must in treating polycystic nephritis, which is used to improve kidney function, especially when patients develop into kidney failure stage.

Prognosis

Polycystic Nephritis is a chronic kidney disease. However, the complications, such as high blood pressure, cysts in liver and cyst rupture speed up the development of the disease.

Eventually, the disease will develop into kidney failure and eventually leads to end stage of kidney disease.