Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a serious condition that affects millions of people around the world. As the disease gets worse, many patients end up needing dialysis to stay alive.
Dialysis is a difficult and expensive process that has to be done regularly. Even though CKD is so common and dangerous, there are still no approved drugs that can actually restore kidney function.
But now, a team of researchers from Tohoku University in Japan has found a surprising new way to help people with CKD—by using a drug that was originally made to treat constipation.
Professor Takaaki Abe and his team discovered that a medicine called lubiprostone, which is normally used to treat constipation, may also help protect the kidneys. This is the first time that this drug has shown real potential to slow down kidney damage in people with CKD.
The idea for the study came from a simple observation: many people with kidney disease also suffer from constipation. The researchers wanted to see if these two problems were connected.
They found that constipation can upset the balance of bacteria in the gut, and this can make kidney function worse. So, they asked an interesting question—what if treating constipation could actually help the kidneys?
To find out, the team ran a clinical trial called the LUBI-CKD TRIAL. They worked with nine hospitals in Japan and studied 150 patients who had moderate CKD.
The patients were given either a placebo (a fake treatment) or a real dose of lubiprostone—either 8 or 16 micrograms. The researchers checked the patients’ kidney health using a measure called eGFR, which tells how well the kidneys are working.
The results were promising. Patients who took lubiprostone showed a slower drop in kidney function compared to those who took the placebo. This means the drug may actually help protect the kidneys from further damage.
But the scientists didn’t stop there. They also wanted to understand why the drug worked. They discovered that lubiprostone helps increase a natural compound in the body called spermidine.
Spermidine helps the cells’ mitochondria—the parts of cells that produce energy—work better. The drug seems to improve the health of the gut, which then leads to better energy production and protection for the kidneys.
This is exciting because it suggests a whole new way to treat CKD. Most current treatments focus on reducing harmful substances in the blood, but they don’t really fix the underlying problem. This new approach may allow doctors to protect kidney function by improving gut health and cell energy.
The next step is to run a larger study (a Phase 3 trial) with more people to make sure the results are consistent and safe. The researchers also want to find special markers in the blood that could tell which patients are most likely to benefit from this treatment.
In the future, treatments could be tailored to fit each person, which would be a big improvement over current “one-size-fits-all” methods.
The study also opens the door to new treatments for other diseases that are linked to problems with mitochondria. The full results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.
If you care about kidney health, please read studies about pesticide linked to chronic kidney disease, and this drug may prevent kidney failure in people with diabetes.
For more health information, please see recent studies about drug duo that may treat kidney failure, and results showing these vegetables may protect against kidney damage.
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