Drug reduces risks for dialysis patients
By Nathan Seppa
Kidney failure has a knack for depleting calcium in the blood. That can weaken a person’s bones and cause other problems.
To correct for a lack of calcium, roughly half of all kidney dialysis patients get vitamin D injections. Unfortunately, calcitriol–an injected form of vitamin D that physicians have been prescribing for more than 2 decades–sometimes causes calcium and phosphate concentrations in the blood to rise steeply, which can boost heart disease risk. A newer form of injectable vitamin D called paricalcitol gained regulatory approval in 1998 after tests showed it did a better job of stabilizing calcium and phosphate concentrations in kidney-disease patients.