The Role for Nutrition in Acute Renal Failure

History of Dietary Protein Therapy for the Treatment of Chronic Renal Disease from the Mid 1800s until the 1950s

“…The hyperfiltration and hypertrophy caused by high protein diets may be injurious to the kidney by increasing the intraglomerular blood pressure and also by promoting intrarenal inflammation, oxidative stress, protein deposition, and scarring [29,41]. In the judgment of many researchers in this field, dietary protein restriction does retard the rate of progression of chronic renal failure in humans, but this is a controversial issue [41,42]. It is puzzling that since the beneficial effects of low protein diets in animals with experimental renal disease or insufficiency were reported by a number of investigators before World War II, it was not until the 1960s that a large number of studies of dietary therapy began to be conducted in patients with chronic renal failure.…”