A recent study has shed light on the link between heart failure and chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Published on December 11 in PLOS ONE, this study comes from researchers at Hunan University of Chinese Medicine in Changsha, China, led by Junyu Zhang.
The team used a large dataset from European populations. This included data on 930,014 people without heart issues (controls) and 47,309 heart failure cases from the HERMES consortium.
They also had data on 736,396 controls and 51,256 CKD cases. The aim was to explore the relationship between heart failure and CKD.
The researchers employed several Mendelian randomization (MR) variations. This method uses genetic information to better understand the cause-and-effect relationships in health.
In their analysis, they found that people genetically inclined to heart failure also had a higher risk of developing CKD.
They used different statistical methods to confirm their findings. For example, the Inverse Variance Weighted (IVM) way showed an odds ratio of 1.12.
This means there was a 12% increased risk of CKD in those with a genetic predisposition for heart failure. The Weighted Median Estimator (WME) method showed a similar trend, with an odds ratio of 1.14.
Interestingly, even when they adjusted for other factors like diabetes and hypertension, this link between heart failure and CKD remained strong. The odds ratios stayed similar across different methods, reinforcing their findings.
However, when they looked at it the other way around – checking if CKD could cause heart failure – they didn’t find a significant causal link.
The study’s authors believe that understanding this connection between heart failure and CKD is crucial. It opens new possibilities for personalized medicine.
Future research could focus on finding specific treatments for different groups of patients. This could help in reducing the risk and slowing down the progression of both heart failure and CKD.
If you care about kidney health, please read studies about drug that prevents kidney failure in diabetes, and drinking coffee could help reduce risk of kidney injury.
For more information about kidney health, please see recent studies about foods that may prevent recurrence of kidney stones, and common painkillers may harm heart, kidneys and more.
The research findings can be found in PLOS ONE.
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