Can the kidneys just recover and repair themselves after some damage?

[Athena]

It's been a few months since my last labs and I have to confess that one morning when I woke up, I had a sudden flash of some vision that perhaps it might be possible for ones kidneys to decide to quietly start repairing themselves. This is what apparently happens in normal healthy people anyway (it's a myth that kidneys don't repair themselves).

Thought I'd just share this flash of insight. I felt quite healthy when I had this flash, I might point out.

[cassandra]

Hi Athena, I don't completely understand what you mean with 'normal healthy people' and repairing kidneys.

I was a 'normal healthy person' when my kidneys decided to start shedding an awful lot of protein. My kidneys didn't pick up on that, and my brain was too young and naive to say no to paid people in white coats who think they know it all. Maybe if I would have walked away my kidneys would only slowly have deteriorated, but I doubt they would have repaired themselves. Apparently I must have had that for an awful long time. Thinking to be normal and healthy.

As Dr.A says acute kidney injury is repairable, kidney disease is not. Probably kidneys themselves have not much of a say in that.

But it must be poss to reduce the rate of deterioration with diet and supplements and stuff.

Lots of love, luck and strength, Cas

[MooseMom]

Cassandra's doc is spot on.  One can recover from acute renal injury, but if you have a chronic kidney DISEASE, I'm thinking that your best bet is to treat the underlying condition for as long as possible.  I am not aware of a chronic kidney disease that is actually curable.

[Fabkiwi06]

I think that it depends on the reasons for the damage, but for the most part it's just wishful thinking.

I do have a friend who didn't have any prior kidney issues and went in to failure. I'm not sure what the official cause was. She was on dialysis briefly, but eventually regained enough function to be bumped back up to Stage 3 Renal Disease. She's not on dialysis anymore, but she still has to be very careful with things and will probably end up back at Stage 5 in her later years.

For my glomerulonephritis... my kidneys aren't coming back, no matter what I do. I think this is true for 95% of the time.

[Charlie B53]

There is a huge difference between desease/ injury/shock.

Any one of the three can cause the kidneys to fail.  Some at more accelerated rates of the loss of function.   

Shock, not just electrical, but the condition of shock, many of the body systems WILL FAIL.  Intense medical intervention, including dialysis may be necessary to maintain life until the 'shock' wears of.  When the kidney function is lost due to shock it may be hours, days, weeks, or months, but most often the kidney DO recover and that patient no longer requires dialysis to maintain life.

Loss of kidney function from bodily infection may often be recoverable to a large extent.  Kidney damage caused by medications for bodily infections not so well but still can to some extent but much of the damage is permanent.

Damage from disease, not so much recover possible.

[deckerj]

It's been a few months since my last labs and I have to confess that one morning when I woke up, I had a sudden flash of some vision that perhaps it might be possible for ones kidneys to decide to quietly start repairing themselves. This is what apparently happens in normal healthy people anyway (it's a myth that kidneys don't repair themselves).

Thought I'd just share this flash of insight. I felt quite healthy when I had this flash, I might point out.

It's my understanding that in chronic kidney disease, once your glomerular function deteriorates to a certain point (<30 ml/min, typically) they end up stressed and complete renal failure is inevitable and simply a matter of time. Other than that, there is possibility of return, but if it happens it will be slow and you'll never fully return to being totally healthy again, and the return in function won't continue forever. As your body ages, you lose renal function; it's an unfortunate feature of human kidneys that happens to EVERYONE.

In my case, I have IgA nephropathy; recovery is impossible for me as the misfolded proteins cause inflamation, which causes fibrosis, which means nephrons die and kidneys gradually stop working. Given that I'm already <30ml/min eGFR, recovery is impossible, even if the IgA nephropathy went away.

If your underlying condition is PKD, your situation will be as bad if not worse than mine. If your underlying condition is diabetes, CONTROL YOUR BLOOD SUGAR and you'll get out of this unscathed if you haven't lost too much glomerular function already, I promise, and you really do not want to join us because if you think diabetes is bad, kidney disease is worse.