In a new study, researchers found that many COVID-19 patients are at risk for acute kidney failure.
They found patients in the hospital with COVID-19, and especially those in the ICU, are at risk for AKI, perhaps as many as 25% to 30%.
The study is the first to examine possible mechanisms that cause acute kidney failure in COVID-19 patients.
The research was conducted by a team at Northwestern University.
Acute kidney failure—also called acute kidney injury (AKI)—is a serious complication of COVID-19 that’s underreported and not well understood.
The death rate for patients with severe acute kidney failure is about 50%.
The team reviewed two recent studies from China with details about kidney tissues from patients who died from COVID-19.
They found the type of acute kidney failure in COVID-19 patients is complex and involves several factors not typically seen in an AKI patient in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Those unique factors include possible invasion of the kidneys by the coronavirus, a tendency to form blood clots, and the formation of active mediators of inflammation.
These new findings can encourage health care providers to increase the focus on the kidneys and obtain proper information about kidney function and structure in COVID-19 patients who develop AKI.
The team says a better understanding of the mechanism will foster the development of effective therapies beyond supportive care in the ICU, which is already critically important as many of these patients require dialysis-related therapy.
The lead author of the study is Dr. Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine and a kidney specialist at Northwestern.
The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
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