What is the Prognosis of Polycystic Kidney Disease

As for the prognosis of Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), it is not the same for all patients. The prognosis of PKD depends on a variety of factors including the age of onset, symptoms and complications, treatments as well as many details in the daily life.

First we need to know that there are two types of PKD, one is autosomal recessive PKD and the other is autosomal dominant PKD. The former has clinical symptoms in childhood and the latter can occur to any age.

ARPKD is rare in clinic and it has poorer prognosis than ADPKD. There are half diseased children will die of respiratory failure or kidney failure within hours to days after birth. Even those that can survive to adulthood will gradually develop kidney failure along with bile duct expansion, congenital hepatic fibrosis. Often the liver will be affected and there are cysts in the liver.

ADPKD can occur to any age and it usually has clinical symptoms at 30 to 50. There are 50% ADPKD will finally develop kidney failure accounting for 5% to 10% of all kidney failure cases. It is a systemic disease involving many other organs and systems besides the kidneys.

Many factors can affect the prognosis of PKD including genotype, gender, age, age of onset, hypertension, hematuria, proteinuria, urinary tract infection, the size of cysts and kidneys, pregnancy, hormones, etc. About 50% patients will progress into end stage kidney disease at the age of 57-73. The risk factors for developing end stage renal disease include genetic mutation of PKD1, male, onset of the disease before 30, onset of hematuria before 30, hypertension before 35. The main causes of death of PKD are cardiovascular complications followed by infections. Therefore it is important to have effective prevention and timely treatments for the symptoms and complications so as to slow down the illness progression and achieve a better prognosis.