Anthony Muiru
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Kidney damage and high blood pressure feed on each other. Damaged kidneys raise blood pressure, and high blood pressure in turn speeds up kidney decline.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
chronic kidney disease
hypertension
elevated blood pressure
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Determine the clinical significance of unexplained leukocyturia (white blood cells in urine) and hematuria (blood in urine) among adults in rural East Africa, by following SEARCH-CKD participants over time and measuring markers in collected samples.
- Examine potential risk factors, including environmental exposures, that could explain the striking geographic variation in chronic kidney disease prevalence across rural communities in Uganda and Kenya, using epidemiological and biostatistical methods.
- Define blood pressure phenotypes, meaning patterns such as daytime versus nighttime pressure, in SEARCH-CKD participants with CKD (about half HIV-positive), using standardized clinic readings followed by 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring.
- Convert the cross-sectional SEARCH-CKD study of 3,686 participants into a longitudinal cohort, with repeated follow-up and biological sample collection, to track kidney disease and blood pressure over time.
More about the research
Both conditions are rising sharply in sub-Saharan Africa, yet little is known about what drives them in rural communities there. Understanding them could also shed light on why people of recent African ancestry carry a heavier burden of these diseases worldwide, including in the US.
Why it matters
Findings on kidney disease and high blood pressure in rural Uganda and Kenya could inform health care policy to address the growing burden of these conditions in sub-Saharan Africa. They may also offer insight into how these diseases develop in people of recent African ancestry, who are disproportionately affected around the world, including in the US.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jeanie Park
Emory University, GA·Physiology
Test whether eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction produces sustained reductions in muscle sympathetic nerve activity, recorded by microneurography, that are linked to lower daytime blood pressure and restored nighttime blood pressure dipping in patients with chronic kidney disease.
Dinushika Mohottige
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Quantify over time how structural racism relates to poor kidney health in Black individuals with APOL1 high-risk alleles, using three large APOL1-enriched cohort studies.
Clintoria Williams
Wright State University, OH·Physiology
Test whether zinc supplementation in early CKD restores zinc balance, limits kidney sodium reabsorption, lowers blood pressure and slows disease in calcineurin inhibitor-treated mice and Akita diabetic kidney disease mice.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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