NEW YORK — A kidney disease that strikes an estimated 100,000 Americans a year has been blocked in rats by an experimental drug that could become a new alternative to transplants or dialysis, a researcher says.

Such a treatment for the disease — glomerulonephritis — also may work for a similar kidney complication of diabetes and high blood pressure, said the researcher, Dr. Wayne Border, a kidney specialist at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Border reports the work in Thursday’s issue of the British journal Nature with Selya Okuda at the medical school, Erkki Ruoslahti and Lucia Languino of the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif., and Michael Sporn of the National Cancer Institute.

The work raises “exciting possibilities” in a new line of research, said Dr. Ira Greifer, professor of pediatrics and nephrology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

Drugs currently used do not always work and can produce major side effects, he said.

But it will take more research to determine what the new approach means for treating human disease, cautioned Dr. Lawrence Agodoa, director of clinical studies in the divison of kidney, urologic and hematologic diseases at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Glomerulonephritis (pronounced glo-MER-ulo-ne-FRI-tis) is an inflammatory process that can destroy ball-shaped kidney structures called glomeruli. The structures help remove wastes from the bloodstream.