VIDEO: Biggest challenges in management of hyperphosphatemia

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The main one is the ability to achieve consistent control of the levels of phosphorous in blood. And we tried to do that with the various phosphate binders, but that results in a large number of pills having to be taken by the patients. And they don't like that. Overall, we're hampered by the idea that we don't know really the phosphorus content of foods. We know in a general way, but a lot of food processing adds phosphorus to foods and it's not included on the labels. So, if you try to restrict dietary phosphorus, there's no good guide to know, are you really achieving that? It depends on who packaged the food really. So these problems are at really all levels of difficulty, from the phosphate in the diet, the large number of phosphate binding tablets you have to take, and the ability to do that in a sustained fashion. So it's quite a difficult problem. And really with the tools that we have today, we can only achieve phosphorus control in about maybe a little over half of the patients that are on dialysis on any consistent basis. So it's a problem. And we need new ways to try and deal with it.