Already, the new MRI method is receiving closer scrutiny. CRISP patients have been asked to stay for another 4 years of MRI monitoring, and about 100 of them are planning to join NIDDK's HALT-PKD trial (www.pkd.wustl.edu/pkd-tn), the first intervention trial to use the MRI method along with standard tests of kidney function. HALT-PKD enrolled its first patient in January 2006 to learn if careful blood pressure control and ACE-inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) can prevent progression of PKD.

CRISP clinical centers are at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Emory University in Atlanta, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Washington University in St. Louis analyzed the MRI images and study data.


As many as half a million people in the United States and 4 to 6 million world-wide are estimated to have PKD. In autosomal dominant PKD, the most common form, symptoms usually appear between the ages of 30 and 40 and include back and side pain and headaches. Half of patients develop kidney failure, on average around age 54; 23,000 were on dialysis or had a transplant for kidney failure in 2003, making it this country's fourth leading cause of kidney failure. More information about PKD is available from NIDDK at www.niddk.nih.gov and from the PKD Foundation at www.pkdcure.org and 1-800-PKD-CURE.

There is no cure and no specific treatment for PKD, but careful blood pressure control and using ACE-inhibitors or ARBs, types of blood pressure medicines, significantly delays or prevents kidney disease and failure from diabetes and other causes by reducing protein in the urine and preventing damage to the small blood vessels in the kidneys. Earlier trials of these treatments in PKD were not definitive, possibly because a small number of patients were involved.

NIDDK's National Kidney Disease Education Program (www.nkdep.nih.gov) aims to raise awareness of the seriousness of kidney disease, the importance of testing those at high risk, and the availability of treatment to prevent or slow kidney failure.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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