Technology
Today’s dialysis machines are far from perfect. Their efficiency is only around 10% of that of a functioning kidney, and when used three times per week, they are incapable of controlling unhealthy fluctuations in the concentrations of metabolites such as urea in the blood. Many researchers are seeking to design an artificial, wearable kidney that would make dialysis a more effective therapy.
Nanotechnology offers enticing possibilities in this area. Thin nanomembranes would be more permeable to solutes in the blood than thicker conventional membranes, and these nanomembranes could be carefully engineered to contain highly selective pores, instead of the randomly sized pores present in membranes used today. Particular pores, for example, could be designed to selectively filter middle-sized molecules from the blood. Some middle-sized molecules, such as beta-microglobulin, can cause debilitating health problems when they accumulate in the body, and traditional dialysis machines do a poor job of filtering these molecules from the blood. Eventually, researchers hope to create a library of engineered pores that would allow nephrologists to come up with customized dialysis regimens specifically tailored to their individual patients. No data are available bench, animal or human trials.
Read more about this topic: Wearable Artificial Kidney
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)