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Wesson Meets With Congressional Representatives on World Kidney Day

Skip breadcrumb navigation WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 8, 2007) – Kidney specialist Don Wesson, M.D., met today with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and Representatives Joe Barton, Lloyd Doggett, Charles Gonzalez and Randy Neugebauer to ask for an increase in federal funding for kidney disease research. The physician’s visit to Capitol Hill came on World Kidney Day, an international effort to raise awareness about the growing incidence of kidney disease and the need for increased funding for kidney disease research and education.

“The number of people with kidney disease has doubled over the last decade. We need more medical research to help kidney disease patients in Michigan,” said Dr. Wesson, vice dean of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. “Locally and nationally we have a lot of baby boomers who are going to be entering their 60s and 70s. Although kidney disease can be diagnosed at any age, it is most common in older Americans. We need more research now to save lives and money later.”

The American Society of Nephrology (ASN), which represents the nation’s leading kidney clinicians and scientists, selected Dr. Wesson to join colleagues from across the country in Washington to speak out on the need for more kidney research and education.

Also today, the ASN released two new studies that show that long-accepted measures to predict heart disease are less accurate when applied to patients with kidney disease. Experts say that kidney disease is often not diagnosed until an individuals’ loss of kidney function is considerable, so a significant number of chronic kidney disease patients are not aware they have the disease. Without early diagnosis and treatment, they are at risk for developing end stage kidney disease or dying prematurely of one of its major complications, cardiovascular disease. More than 20 million Americans, or one in nine adults, have chronic kidney disease.

More information about kidney disease and World Kidney Day can be found online at www.asn-online.org.

The American Society of Nephrology is a not-for-profit organization of 10,000 physicians and scientists dedicated to the study of nephrology and committed to providing a forum for the promulgation of information regarding the latest research and clinical findings on kidney diseases.
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