Chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-associated pruritus, formerly named uraemic pruritus) remains a frequent and sometimes tormenting problem in patients with advanced or end-stage renal disease.1 Many attempts have been made to relieve this bothersome symptom in affected patients, but with limited success in general. After a new treatment option is reported to be effective, only a little time elapses before conflicting results concerning CKD-associated pruritus are published. In the meantime patients' and physicians' mood changes from euphoria to disillusionment. This happened with erythropoetin2, 3 and naltrexone4, 5 as the last propagated treatment modalities in this respect. The main obstacle in the effort to create effective treatment modalities is the incomplete knowledge of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. Furthermore, given the great clinical heterogeneity of CKD-associated pruritus, systematic studies are hard to obtain and therefore sparse. © 2010 Springer-Verlag London.