The Gerber Foundation recently awarded the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital a $70,000 grant to research kidney growth and development in premature infants, specifically looking for links between chronic kidney disease and the interventions and therapies used to keep the infants alive and help them grow.
By 2010, an estimated 650,000 American will have end stage renal disease. Of those, over 36 percent are young adults who will require dialysis; another 42 percent will need a kidney transplant before the age of 20.
Experts believe that many of these young adults started their decline as children or adolescents, but there is no national database that tracks how many children have chronic kidney disease or information on how they got it.
“Intervention and therapies help reduce the effects of premature birth, but many are thought to contribute to chronic kidney disease,” says Dr. Tim Bunchman, division chief of nephrology, in a prepared statement. “The study will enable us to determine predictors of damaged or injured kidneys and change treatment accordingly.”
“This research is expected to provide baseline data for future studies and lay a foundation for nationally funded grants,” says Steve Gelfand, a neonatal physician at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital.
Pediatric resident Natalie vanVenrooij will work with Dr. Bunchman, Dr. Gelfand and colleagues from the Neonatal Center at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital on the year-long study of 30 neonatal patients.
The Neonatal Center at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital is the 10th largest in the nation, caring for some 1,200 premature babies each year.
Source: Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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