Symptoms of the Disease of Polycystic Kidney Disease

As we all know, the disease of Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a type of genetic kidney disease. When the patients are in the childhood, the sizes and shapes of kidneys are normal or a little enlarged. With the increase of the age, the cysts in the kidneys will enlarge gradually and the number of the cysts will increase. For most patients, the size of the kidneys will enlarge to certain level and cause a series of symptoms until 30-50 years old. The main symptoms include the two sides of kidneys swollen, pain of the kidney area, hematuria, hypertension and so on.

First, swollen of the kidneys: the lesions progress of the two kidneys may be asymmetric and the sizes of them are different. When it development to the end stage, the two kidneys may squeeze the whole space of enterocoelia. And there are numerous cysts in the kidney which makes the shape of the kidney irregular, concave-convex and hard.

Second, pain of the kidney area: this is an important symptom of this disease. The common feelings are tension, dull pain or sharp pain of the back and waist. Sometimes, it is the abdominal pain. The pain may aggravate with the Physical Activity, long-time walking, long-time sitting and so on. And the feeling may be relived after staying in bed. In some cases, inter haemorrhage of the kidney and kidney stones are the reasons for the sudden severe pain.

Third, hematuria: there are about half patients with this disease who have the symptom of microscopic hematuria, and sometimes there may be gross hematuria.
These are caused by the rupture of the blood vessels on the cysts wall. During the severe haemorrhage, the blood clots usually cause the angina when they pass through the ureter. Hematuria is usually companied by leucocyturia and proteinuria. But the amount of the urine protein is little and usually it won’t exceed 1.0g/d. when there is kidney internal infection, there is obvious pyuria and there aggravated hematuria and backache companied by fever.

Forth, hypertension: before the rise of serum creatinine, there are about half of the patients having the symptom of hypertension. This is related to the cysts’ compression to the surrounding renal tissues, which can activate the renin-angiotension-aldosterone system. In recent years, Graham PC、Torre V and Chapman AB all have proven that patients of this disease have the increase of renin particles on the normal tissues, mesenchyme near the cysts and the epithelical cells of the cysts. In return, this has close relation to the enlargement of the cysts and hypertension. In other words, for the patients with hypertension, the cysts will grow faster and this will affect the prognosis directly.

Fifth, renal insufficiency: this disease will gradually develop to renal insufficiency. For some individual cases, renal failure may occur in the adolescence. Generally, there is only a small part of the decline of the renal function before 40 years old. But the progression to the renal failure of patients who have hypertension is shortened greatly.


So, pay attention to the symptoms of Polycystic Kidney Disease and adopt treatment as early as possible. If you have other doubt about the symptoms of this disease, send email to kidney-treatment@hotmail.com .