According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 37 million U.S. adults have chronic kidney disease, although the vast majority do not know it.
Chronic kidney disease is easy to miss, especially in its early stages, because it typically features mild and nonspecific symptoms such as unexplained itching and swollen feet and ankles.
In a recent study from Johns Hopkins, scientists found despite their higher risk of chronic kidney disease, people with high blood pressure or diabetes usually are not given a simple test for protein in the urine to screen for this potentially deadly disorder.
They analyzed data of nearly four million hypertension and diabetes patients around the world and found that only about 4% of the former and 35% of the latter had been screened for chronic kidney disease with a test for albuminuria, a standard measure of protein in the urine.
This was despite the relatively high rates of chronic kidney disease that are generally found among hypertension and diabetes patients.
These results highlight the need to widen albuminuria testing for early detection of chronic kidney diseases—especially now that we have new and more effective treatments that could benefit these patients.
The team says people who were tested were not those at the highest risk—they were just a random subset.
They estimate that the number of patients with a high risk of kidney disease was far greater than the number of detected cases—almost 20 times greater among hypertension patients.
If you care about kidney health, please read studies about newer diabetes drug that can protect kidney and heart, and weight change may harm people with kidney disease.
For more information about kidney health, please see recent studies about how to protect against kidney disease, and results showing 5 things you need to know about kidney cancer.
The research was published in Hypertension and conducted by Jung-Im Shin et al.
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