Recent advances in the treatment of renal osteodystrophy

Renal bone disease is one of the main complications of chronic kidney disease (CKD). As a narrower term of "renal bone disease", renal osteodystrophy(ROD) refers to histological abnormalities of bone associated with CKD. Such a severe bone damage secondary to CKD boosts the risk of fracture or even death in CKD patients. According to the pathophysiological changes, ROD can be divided into three types of high conversion, low conversion and mixed bone diseases. With a higher incidence of CKD, ROD becomes more and more common. Timely and effective treatment is vital for obtaining a better prognosis. Currently clinical treatment of ROD is targeting its related minerals and metabolic abnormalities. For lacking research evidence of an excellent effect on advanced bone disease, drug-related studies have rarely addressed different types of ROD so that greater difficulties exist in the selection of clinical applications. Manipulating different molecules involved in the pathogenesis of ROD may intervene its progress. A new therapeutic target of ROD is bound to further improve its prognosis and therapeutic efficacy. However, few researches have focused upon the treatment of mixed bone disease. This review summarized the latest treatments of high-conversion and low-conversion bone diseases.