Kidney Disease

Aggressively lowering blood pressure does not prevent further kidney damage in African Americans unless they already have protein in their urine, a sign of more advanced kidney disease. In that case, aggressive treatment reduces end-stage kidney disease and death by about 25%, researchers said Wednesday. Data from the same study had earlier shown that the aggressive treatment does not prevent kidney-disease progression over a four-year period, but the new results reported in the New England Journal of Medicine extend the findings out to 12 years.

The symptoms of restless legs syndrome sound so bizarre — creepy-crawly feelings and an uncontrollable urge to move the legs, especially at bedtime — that, until recently, many sufferers have simply not been believed. Ron Blum, 38, a Boston e-mail marketer who got RLS as a 7-year-old, recalls that the minute he lay down and tried to sleep, "my left leg felt like it had to go for a walk." Though he never told his parents, he'd get up and walk for hours in circles. It wasn't until years later that a friend heard about RLS. "He called me up and said, 'Ron, I know what you have.

There are plenty of good reasons to take care of your kidneys -- no one really wants to go on dialysis or get a transplant. Poorly functioning kidneys also increase your chances of developing -- and dying from -- cardiovascular disease. Now, a study suggests that even moderate kidney disease increases the risk for men to develop certain cancers. Chronic kidney disease affects 26 million adults in the U.S., and the numbers are on the rise.

Dr. William B. Schwartz, a renowned kidney disease specialist and researcher who later turned his attention to health policy and began sounding a warning in the 1980s that rising healthcare costs would force America to begin rationing medical care, has died. He was 86. Schwartz, an emeritus professor of medicine at USC, died March 15 at his home in Los Angeles of Alzheimer's disease, said his wife, Tressa Ruslander Miller.

The moment was captured by Times photographer Gary Friedman in August, when Maria Reyes, an 86-year-old native of El Salvador, became a U.S. citizen. "Look at this," Friedman said at the time, dropping a copy of his picture on my desk. He had been at the ceremony working on an unrelated assignment but was struck by this scene. I could see why. The picture of Reyes holding her small U.S. flag has an Ellis Island quality to it, tinted with loss and hope.

"Men in Trees, A Tale of Two Kidneys"; ABC; March 26; 10 p.m. The premise: Up in the wilderness of Elmo, Alaska, handyman Cash (played by Scott Elrod) loses consciousness and is rushed to the hospital, where his doctor discovers he has "degenerative kidney disease" and requires dialysis. Calling dialysis a short-term solution, the doctor places Cash on a donor list for kidney transplantation but warns that he could die while waiting for a kidney from a deceased donor.

Sunyun Lee's greatest gift to her brother came after her death. Three days after she died unexpectedly from an aneurysm on Jan. 18, a team at a Long Island hospital transplanted both her kidneys into her brother. Now Seung Hoon Lee has a chance at a normal life, doctors said. At a news conference later, a tearful Seung Hoon Lee spoke of his sister through a Korean interpreter. He said that he could feel her spirit within him and that he would "be very careful" to protect it. For the families involved, the dramatic events somehow make emotional sense: Sunyun Lee, a 46-year-old mother of two, was her brother's greatest support after he was diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease in November.

For-profit dialysis chains treating the bulk of kidney disease patients in the U.S. are more aggressive in using lucrative anemia drugs compared with their nonprofit peers, a study released Tuesday said. The Journal of the American Medical Assn. study compared prescribing patterns at nonprofits versus big corporate chains and found that doctors at chains gave patients bigger increases and total doses of epoetin.

A panel of U.S. kidney disease experts Thursday called for less-aggressive treatment of kidney disease patients -- a move that could hurt sales of lucrative anemia drugs that boost red blood cell levels but have come under scrutiny over safety concerns. The National Kidney Foundation said its work group on kidney disease outcomes now believed that hemoglobin levels should be kept in a range of 11 to 12 grams per decaliter (gm/dl), compared with a previous range of 11 to 13 gm/dl.

Her junior year in high school had just begun when Jasmine Bedell's telephone rang with the news she had been waiting for years to hear: A donor kidney had been located. The transplant ended five long years of dialysis treatments. It also ended her dream of attending her senior prom. After the operation, a draining regimen of medications to stop her body from rejecting the new organ forced Bedell to drop out of school.