The use of probiotics in the end-stage renal disease management

Nowadays kidney transplant or dialysis are the only chances to manage end-stage renal disease (ESRD), which implies a considerable increase of the plasma concentration of uremic wastes such as: creatinine, urea and uric acid. The relevant problem of such invasive and complicated procedures is the high social cost (in 2010, in America, the ESRD social charge has been more than 28 bilions dollars) 1 that prevents many low income countries to adequately assist the renal insufficiency patients. Over the years many studies on uremic wastes removal through the gut lumen have been published with conflictuary results. More recently live probiotics microencapsulation by small indipendent research groups,2-9 focused our attention, in the perspective of selective bacterial flora utilization to enhance the intra-gut lumen catabolism of the impaired kidney derived toxic compounds.