SCIENTISTS report that the global
rate of people dying with kidney
disease has seen a sharp increase in the past 27 years and that many of these deaths were preventable.
When a person develops chronic kidney disease (CKD), their kidneys slowly stop functioning over months or years. Usually, the kidneys filter excess fluid and waste from the blood, as the kidneys fail, these fluids accumulate.
There are no symptoms of CKD in the early stages, but if a person does not receive treatment, CKD will progress to end stage kidney disease; this requires dialysis treatment or a kidney transplant.
Scientists have estimated that 14% of the United States population has CKD.
People with kidney disease are also at a much higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, which is the most common cause of death in people with CKD. Cardiovascular disease death rates in people undergoing dialysis are 10–20 times greater than in the general population.
High blood pressure or diabetes commonly causes CKD, but it can also develop because of HIV infection or exposure to toxins or heavy metals. Sometimes, the primary cause of a person’s CKD remains unknown.
There is no cure for CKD, although lifestyle changes can help prevent the condition from getting worse. People in later stages of the disease need expensive renal replacement therapy, for example, kidney dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive.
How many people have CKD?
The Lancet recently published a study to calculate the global health burden of CKD as part of the annual Global Burden of Disease study.
This observational epidemiological study was one among many designed to calculate and compare the health impact of 359 diseases and injuries, and 85 risk factors across 195 countries.
The researchers gathered information from published literature, government records, end stage kidney disease registries, and household survey data. They used statistical modeling to calculate the global burden of CKD, including calculations on mortality, years of life lost, and life-years adjusted for disability.
Some regions, including Latin America, have limited data on people with CKD, so the researchers used geographical proximity estimates to calculate the true cases in that region.
They report that, globally, nearly 700 million people had CKD in 2017 and 1.2 million people died from the disease. Additionally, there were 1.36 million deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease, resulting from impaired kidney function.
