Indian American professor gets USD 1.6M grant to protect kidneys from obesity

To strengthen it, Hussain said he would use a drug that binds to it and activates it.

With one-third of the US population being obese, the NIH estimates that the annual cost to manage or treat obesity-associated disorders to be as high as USD 125 billion. These disorders include chronic as well as acute kidney injury (AKI).

Chronic kidney injury is the result of progressive loss of kidney function leading to irreversible damage, while AKI occurs as an abrupt loss of kidney function and usually is reversible. In both processes, inflammation plays a significant role in the initiation and maintenance of the injury.

"Obesity is associated with low-grade chronic inflammation in the body," Hussain said.

He added he was hopeful that his research would one day work to stop kidney diseases caused by inflammation.

"Once we study and better understand AT2R as a target, making new prevention drugs would be easy," he said.

Earlier, Hussain had already shown that AT2R activation with drugs promotes sodium excretion into urine, helping to lower blood pressure.

This is the first time the receptors role to protect kidney structure and function against injury in obese subjects will be investigated.

Hussain earned his B.Sc (Chemistry), M.Sc, M.Phil and Ph.D (Biochemistry) from the Aligarh Muslim University, in Aligarh, India, and Post-Doctorate (Pharmacology) from the East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.