High blood pressure could do more damage than you think.
A research team from the Medical University of Vienna has discovered that high blood pressure on its own can damage very important kidney cells.
This finding is important because it shows that high blood pressure may begin to harm the kidneys even before the symptoms appear.
The results of the study were published in the journal Hypertension and was led by Christopher Paschen, Rainer Oberbauer, and Heinz Regele.
Their goal was to learn more about how high blood pressure affects kidney function and its cells which are usually addressed as nephrons.
The kidneys are essential for filtering waste and extra fluids from the body. Inside each kidney are tiny filters called glomeruli, which are made up of special cells known as podocytes.
These podocytes are key to the kidney’s filtering function and when they are damaged or reduced in number, the kidney cannot work as well.
To investigate, the team analyzed kidney tissue from 99 patients. Some of the patients had high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes, and some had neither.
The tissue samples came from people who had undergone surgery to remove a kidney tumor between 2013 and 2018. Importantly, the researchers only studied healthy parts of the kidney, not the areas affected by the tumor.
They used advanced imaging tools and artificial intelligence to carefully measure the size and number of podocytes, as well as the amount of the glomeruli.
The findings showed that people with high blood pressure had lesser podocytes than those without it. Their remaining podocyte cells were also larger, with bigger cell nuclei. These changes were seen even in people who did not have diabetes, suggesting that high blood pressure alone can lead to early kidney damage.
This kind of structural change in the kidney is one of the first warning signs of potential problems in kidney function.
However, since these changes happen before any symptoms or abnormal lab results appear, they could help doctors detect kidney problems earlier.