Pediatric Nephrology - What’s New in Hypertension: a topical collection
Cardiovascular disease is common in children with kidney disease, and is a key risk factor for mortality and morbidity. Hypertension is a hallmark of cardiovascular disease, but while in adults it is a main cause of renal disease, in children the opposite is usually true, with kidney problems predominantly giving rise to hypertension. As such, adult data cannot simply be extended to children, and pediatric-specific studies are vital to generate treatment guidelines for children. In addition, the rapid increase in childhood obesity is also resulting in new challenges to managing kidney diseases. Recent decades have seen major strides forward in terms of defining and monitoring the causes, treatment and outcome of hypertension in children with chronic kidney disease, in part due to the results of large study groups such as CKiD and NAPRTCS. However there are still many gaps in our understanding, and many areas of active research, such as optimal drug dosing, blood pressure targets and how to measure outcomes, especially in complex and refractory disease. ‘What’s New in Hypertension’ will concentrate all the latest studies in this important field published in Pediatric Nephrology.