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As the largest kidney research charity in the UK, nothing is going to stop us in our urgent mission to end kidney disease. We’re here to be heard, to make a difference, to change the future. This is a disease that ruins and destroys lives. It must be stopped.
Over the past 60 years, our research has made an impact. But kidney failure is rising, as are the factors contributing to it, such as diabetes and obesity. Today, we are more essential than ever.
Kidney disease affects three million people in the UK, treatments can be gruelling and currently there is no cure. Only research will end this and nobody can do it but us.
Supporting us by playing our raffle can do something incredible.
The cost of your tickets will help ensure that vital research to end kidney disease can continue in 2023.
Research can change lives
Dr Soma Meran at Cardiff University is leading a study to discover what causes heart disease in patients with kidney disease.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death in kidney patients. Currently available medicines often don’t work well in kidney patients because, unlike in the general population, their heart disease is often caused by calcium and phosphate building up in blood vessels. This is called vascular calcification and has no treatment.
Dr Meran and team at Cardiff University will investigate what causes vascular calcification so that new, more specific, treatments can be developed to improve heart health in kidney patients. The research team think that high levels of inflammation in kidney disease can cause changes in the walls of arteries, encouraging them to harden into a bone-like state. By studying cells, laboratory models and blood samples, they will investigate the link between inflammation and changes in artery walls that may lead to heart disease.
By studying the biological processes linked to heart disease in chronic kidney disease, this could help identify new treatments targeting the unique changes as kidney failure progresses.
Dr Soma Meran’s work is supported by a Kidney Research UK and Kidney Wales studentship grant of £75,000.
Kidney disease ends here.
Click here to find out more about the research we fund.
