“Chronic kidney disease is a permanent reduction in renal function and, until now, has also been defined as progressive. Now, however, the spectrum of therapy in these patients of ours has changed a lot. This disease certainly has an epidemic character today because, with the increase in the average age of the population and the surge in obesity, diabetes and hypertension, we have more and more patients presenting with chronic kidney disease: it is estimated that there are 850 million worldwide and around 5 million in Italy “. This was said by Luca De Nicola, professor of Nephrology at the L. Vanvitelli University of Campania in Naples, on the occasion of the meeting ‘Towards a future without dialysis’ organized by Bayer to announce that AIFA has admitted finerenone, a new drug for the treatment of stage 3 and 4 chronic kidney disease associated with type 2 diabetes in adult patients with albuminuria, in addition to standard of care.
“Numbers that are equal to or even higher than those of diabetes – continues De Nicola – and twenty times higher than patients with cancer. It is therefore not a rare disease, it is one of the most common pathologies. So much so that today we, as a scientific society of nephrology, are asking the World Health Organization to add it to the four chronic degenerative diseases, namely cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and respiratory diseases. We are asking because we need to raise awareness of the importance of this disease, a disease that has everything negative: from the spread, to the complications, up to the costs, which are very high. Each patient on dialysis costs 50 thousand euros per year, for which the National Health Service spends approximately 2.3. billion per year.”
For patients with MRC “the good news is that today we have the drugs to be able to combat this pathology – underlines the specialist – To the drugs that we already know and have had at our disposal for some time, today we also have the possibility of adding finerenone. This selective antagonist non-steroidal stimulation of mineralocorticoid receptors has an antifibrotic, antiproteinuric and ‘anti progression’ effect on renal disease, as demonstrated in the studies that have been carried out”. “It is, therefore, a very important weapon recently at our disposal, to add to what we already have. Today, therefore, I would probably change the definition of chronic kidney disease, it is no longer permanent and progressive, but only permanent” he concludes.
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