Clintoria Williams
Wright State University, OH·Physiology
Up to 90% of people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have high blood pressure (BP), and the two feed each other: high blood pressure damages the kidneys further, which makes blood pressure harder to control. Many patients' pressure stays high despite medication, and most people with early CKD do not know they have it.
- Fields
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
chronic kidney disease
hypertension
blood pressure
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Test whether zinc supplementation in early CKD restores zinc balance, limits kidney sodium reabsorption, lowers blood pressure and slows disease in calcineurin inhibitor-treated mice and Akita diabetic kidney disease mice.
- Test whether zinc plus a zinc ionophore, which helps move zinc into cells, overcomes urinary zinc wasting to restore sodium excretion and blood pressure control in late-stage CKD mice.
- Identify zinc-sensitive signaling molecules that limit sodium reabsorption through NCC in the distal convoluted tubule, using mouse models and cultured mouse DCT cells.
More about the research
Zinc (Zn) may help break this cycle. Zinc deficiency has been linked to poor salt excretion by the kidney, hypertension and kidney damage. In Zn-deficient mice, a kidney salt transporter called NCC (the sodium chloride cotransporter) increases, more sodium is reabsorbed, and blood pressure rises. Restoring zinc reverses these effects. As CKD advances, however, patients lose more zinc in their urine, which may limit how well supplements work later in the disease.
Why it matters
Patients with CKD often have treatment-resistant high blood pressure that speeds kidney decline, and most early cases go undiagnosed. Showing whether zinc, alone or with a zinc ionophore, can restore blood pressure control at different disease stages could point to new treatment strategies for CKD patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nicholas Ferreri
New York Medical College, NY·Physiology
Determine which kidney tubule cells produce the TNF that limits salt-driven blood pressure rises, using mice lacking TNF in the thick ascending limb or distal nephron plus cell-specific TNF-silencing lentiviruses.
Roderick Tan
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Measure how the activity of renal nerves changes across different forms of chronic kidney disease, using several mouse models of CKD.
Nicolae David
Northwestern University, IL·Physiology
Test whether inflammation suppresses HNF4α, a gene-activating transcription factor, in bone-forming osteoblasts, creating a feed-forward loop that blunts parathyroid hormone (PTH) response, by switching Hnf4α2 on or off in mice with CKD or PTH challenges.
The school
Wright State University: 2 labs on PI Pages, $23M a year on research, 28 research doctorates a year.
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