The kidney filters urea from the blood plasma using osmosis through aquaporins (water-filtering nanopores). The pressure exerted is usually only a 40th as great as that of desalination of seawater and the energy consumption is around 100 times lower than with HD dialysis machines.

Acute kidney disease is kidney damage or loss of kidney function. These are reversible if they occur within a short period of time, which is why they are also called “acute”.

These include, for example, toxic poisoning, shocks to the upper abdominal area and other types of accidents. These then cause a state of shock, sometimes for a short time, from which the kidneys can recover.

In the case of so-called chronic kidney disease, people do not initially notice the disease when the disease begins.

What is also known as “chronic kidney failure” can be caused by very different causes.

These include, among others:

• Diabetes mellitus (ca. 30%)
• Hypertension (ca. 20%)
• Glomerulopathy (10-15%)
• Interstitiel Nephritis (darunter Analgetikanephritis 8-10%)
• Hereditary kidney diseases (e.g. cystic kidneys, ca. 5%)
• Autoimmune diseases (e.g. vasculitis, ca. 5%)
• Unknown genesis (8-10%)

Since the kidneys slowly stop functioning, the disease only becomes noticeable through the symptoms of nephrotic syndrome.

Genetic kidney diseases are congenital kidney diseases.

Depending on the clinical picture, these become noticeable very early in infancy or late in adulthood.

These include:

• Polycystic kidney disease (familial cystic kidneys).
• Alport Syndrome.
• Focal sclerosing kidney disease.
• Thrombotic microangiopathy.
• Tubulopathies.
• Mitochondrial diseases.

In the final stage, chronic kidney insufficiency and genetic kidney diseases lead to irretrievable loss of function of both kidneys and thus to dependence on dialysis if a kidney transplant is not attempted beforehand.