Proteinuria Caused by High Blood Pressure

For people who suffer from chronic high blood pressure, proteinuria can come as an earliest warning sign for injury on their kidneys. Kidney disease caused by hypertension can cause nocturia or increased night urination at the meantime, however this may be ignored by the patients. The symptom proteinuria indicates the kidneys have been damaged, and it is crucial that timely and proper treatment is taken to prevent the kidneys from worsening quickly. It will be too late when the disease progresses into end-stage kidney failure.

Our kidneys are filers of human body. In its simplest form, the kidney functions much like a simple kitchen strainer. Blood passes over a series of holes in the renal blood vessels, and a small amount of it is allowed to flow through the more complicated regions of the kidney, where more detailed filtering occurs. The initial filtering function to exclude certain blood components is based solely on size. In our body, the force that causes blood to move through the kidney filters is the blood pressure. Make the blood pressure too low and there is not adequate amounts of blood through the filter, causing a decrease in the amount of blood filtered and reducing the urine output. On the other way, elevated blood pressure can increase the blood filtered and increase the urine output produced. Our kidneys have a built-in gate system that resists high blood pressure and keeps the filtration rate relatively stable.

In people with chronically elevated blood pressure, the gating system can get broken down gradually. The kidneys are exposed to abnormally high blood pressures which they can not handle. This could cause a deterioration of the blood vessel structures that form the kidney filters. Sizes of the filtering holes are enlarged, as a result, progressively large substances that are initially unable to pass the kidney filter, now may become part of the urine. The protein leakage from urine suggests glomerular filter damages caused by persistently elevated blood pressure.

The incidence of kidney damage caused by hypertension is closely linked to the severity and the duration time of high blood pressure. In early stage there is mild increase of albumin in urine, and urinalbuminuria testing will be helpful for early diagnosis of hypertensive kidney disease. Some other special tests are needed to evaluate the kidney condition on the patients.

In general, kidney damage caused by high blood pressure is irreversible, so it is important to control blood pressure to avoid such damage. Hypertensive kidney disease usually accompany other blood vessel complications in its developing process due to the high blood pressure, and people will need to know early management and prevention is the best choice for them.