Kidney disease is silent

End-stage renal failure is imminent for people who do not receive adequate treatment for kidney disease, especially when their condition is exacerbated by existing risk factors such as type 2 diabetes mellitus.

THE modern understanding of kidney disease is remarkably recent. It was only in 1827 that Richard Bright described in Report of Medical Cases a condition combining the presence of swelling or oedema with the presence of protein in the urine (proteinuria) – attributing it to a problem with the kidney.

Since one of the functions of the kidney is the filtering of waste products from the blood, we can estimate the health of the kidney by monitoring the filtration capacity or capability of the kidney, or its glomerular filtration rate (GFR).