kidney

How exactly kidney cells transport blood through the organ's tubes has remained a mystery. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University have investigated the mechanical forces at work and found a previously unobserved pumping action by kidney cells.

Although kidney stones can be treated with medication, larger ones are often broken up with an endoscopic laser. A new hydrogel is now claimed to be capable of removing even the smallest of the resulting fragments, instead of just leaving them.

An article is reporting on the first 19 humans treated with a new non-invasive method designed to break up kidney stones using sound waves. The method successfully fragmented most kidney stones, promising a non-surgical way to treat patients.

Patients with kidney failure require regular dialysis, an invasive and potentially risky treatment. But now researchers have successfully demonstrated a prototype bioartificial kidney, which can be implanted and works without the need for drugs.

Researchers have discovered a population of natural barometers that monitor and maintain our blood pressure. The cellular sensors have for decades been presumed to be located in a certain type of cell in the kidney, but have only now been detected.

Results from a trial testing an ultrasound therapy for hypertension show the treatment can deliver meaningful reductions in blood pressure. The treatment is based on a hypothesis that disrupting signals from renal nerves can reduce blood pressure.

Scientists at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University are reporting a breakthrough that could greatly improve on methods to detect kidney stones, demonstrating a novel type of urine test that can return results in just 30 minutes.

Organ transplants are invasive and donors hard to find. Treating kidney disease with stem cells is an option, and now researchers have isolated and studied kidney stem cells from urine samples, which could be a much easier way to collect them.

Kidney stones are a common health problem, and while manageable, they can be quite painful. Now, researchers at MIT have found a particular combination of two drugs that can relax urinary tract tubes, allowing stones to be passed more easily.

Success with chemotherapy is a trade-off against subsequent damage to otherwise healthy organs, but thanks to a chance meeting at the Hudson Institute in Melbourne, lung cancer patients could be looking at more effective chemo with fewer side effects.

For the first time, scientists have successfully grown functioning human kidney tissue in the lab that is able to produce urine. The kidney tissue, generated from human stem cells, was implanted under the skin of mice and went on to develop into working kidney cells.

Ordinarily, when a donated kidney is waiting to be transplanted, it's cooled on ice. Doctors from Toronto General Hospital have become the first in North America to try another technique, however. They've kept a kidney alive at body temperature, using an altered heart-lung machine.