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Questioning the kidney-protective effects of tolvaptan: a testable hypothesis to revisit the current narrative.

Article No results yet Peer reviewed

Key takeaways

Tolvaptan is the only approved drug for slowing polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), an inherited disease where cysts crowd out working kidney tissue. It makes people urinate heavily, and many either refuse it or stop taking it. This opinion piece argues that this dropout may make the drug look more protective in trials than it truly is, and proposes a way to test that idea. It is a hypothesis, not data: no results yet, and no reason to stop the drug based on it.

Who did this work

Groothof D · S Erler N · Bakker SJL

Source

Article · PubMed, the drug frontier · 2026 Jul 16
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42661607/