Blood Diseases

Your blood is living tissue made up of liquid and solids. The liquid part, called plasma, is made of water, salts and protein. Over half of your blood is plasma. The solid part of your blood contains red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.

Blood diseases and disorders affect one or more parts of the blood and prevent your blood from doing its job. Many blood diseases and disorders are caused by genes. Other causes include other diseases, side effects of medicines, and a lack of certain nutrients in your diet. Common blood disorders include anemia and bleeding disorders such as hemophilia.

Anemia is a condition in which the body has fewer red blood cells than normal. Red blood cells carry oxygen to tissues and organs throughout the body and enable them to use energy from food. With anemia, red blood cells carry less oxygen to tissues and organs—particularly the heart and brain—and those tissues and organs may not function as well as they should.

Anemia commonly occurs in people with chronic kidney disease (CKD)—the permanent, partial loss of kidney function. Anemia might begin to develop in the early stages of CKD, when someone has 20 to 50 percent of normal kidney function. Anemia tends to worsen as CKD progresses. Most people who have total loss of kidney function, or kidney failure, have anemia .A person has kidney failure when he or she needs a kidney transplant or dialysis in order to live. The two forms of dialysis include dialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Dialysis uses a machine to circulate a person’s blood through a filter outside the body. Peritoneal dialysis uses the lining of the abdomen to filter blood inside the body.

When kidneys are diseased or damaged, they do not make enough EPO. As a result, the bone marrow makes fewer red blood cells, causing anemia. When blood has fewer red blood cells, it deprives the body of the oxygen it needs.

Other common causes of anemia in people with kidney disease include blood loss from hemodialysis and low levels of the following nutrients found in food:

• iron
• vitamin B12
• folic acid

These nutrients are necessary for red blood cells to make hemoglobin, the main oxygen-carrying protein in the red blood cells.

If treatments for kidney-related anemia do not help, the health care provider will look for other causes of anemia, including

• other problems with bone marrow
• inflammatory problems—such as arthritis, lupus, or inflammatory bowel disease—in which the body’s immune system attacks the body’s own cells and organs
• chronic infections such as diabetic ulcers
• malnutrition