Why Patients with Uremia Suffer from Muscle Twitching

Muscle twitching is a common complication in Uremia patients. It is mainly caused by hypocalcemia. To avoid muscle twitching, the patients with Uremia should elevate blood calcium level. Therefore, it is very essential for the patients with Uremia to know the causes of hypocalcemia.

※ Diet: The patients with Uremia need to strict their daily diet resulting in insufficient vitamin D supplement.

※ Metabolic disorder of vitamin D: As the patients with Uremia lack 1α- hydroxylase，it can hinder the production of active vitamin D3 which can promote the absorption of calcium by intestines and stomach. As the vitamin D3 level decreases, the patients may suffer from hypocalcemia.

※ Hyperphophatemia: In Uremia, the patients’ glomerular filtration rate (GFR) declines. As a result, the phosphorus can not be secreted from blood normally resulting in high phosphorus level in blood. To keep the product of calcium and phosphorus stable, the calcium level in blood will decline.

Hypocalcemia can increase the neuromuscular excitability. If hypocalcemia is not serious, the patients only have numb, stabbing pain without obvious muscle twitching. If the calcium level can not be corrected, it will lead to serious hypocalcemia. In that case, the patients often have cramp in skeletal muscle and smooth muscle. For the patients with acidosis, although their serum calcium level declines, the free calcium level is not low, which can decrease the neuromuscular irritability. Therefore, although the blood calcium level decreases, the patients may not have muscle twitching. However, after the acidosis is corrected, muscle twitching may occur suddenly. Therefore, the patients should keep the calcium supplement when correcting acidosis.

There are various causes of muscle twitching in patients with Uremia. The patients should find the cause of the problem and then take relative treatment.

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