Chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) is recognized as a major public health challenge and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the dry zone in Sri Lanka. In general CKDu is asymptomatic until at least two-thirds of the functional capacity of the kidneys is lost. Therefore one of the main challenges in CKD is to detect the disease at an early stage. One of our group’s major effort is to develop a portable and affordable ultrasound probe that can detect CKDu at an early stage.

We hypothesize that the burden of intersitital fibrosis in the CKDu kidney, and therefore the severity of the disease, is reflected in the frequency spectrum of the scattered ultrasound from the kidney. We are currently conducting a clinical study on CKDu patients coupled with laboratory experiments to develop a novel set of parameters that can be used to detect and stratify CKDu.