Chronic kidney disease is one of the world’s most common long-term health conditions, yet many people have never heard of it until they are diagnosed.
The kidneys remove waste products, balance fluids, control minerals, and help regulate blood pressure.
When they gradually lose these abilities, harmful waste builds up in the body and the risk of many serious illnesses increases.
Because kidney disease usually develops slowly and causes few symptoms in its early stages, many people do not realize anything is wrong until significant damage has already occurred.
Doctors are especially concerned because chronic kidney disease greatly increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and early death.
If the disease progresses, some patients eventually need dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive. For this reason, researchers closely monitor how common kidney disease is and what is causing it.
A new study from researchers at Boston University has found that although the overall number of Americans living with chronic kidney disease has changed very little over the past decade, the main cause of the disease is shifting. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers found that about one in seven adults in the United States had chronic kidney disease in both 2013 and 2023.
However, kidney disease linked to diabetes increased from 4.7 percent to 5.7 percent during that time, representing about a 30 percent relative increase. Kidney disease not related to diabetes remained largely unchanged.
To understand these trends, the scientists analyzed health information from 25,106 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2013 and 2023. Every participant completed interviews, physical examinations, blood tests, and urine tests.
The team used two standard kidney tests. One blood test measured how well the kidneys filtered waste, while a urine test checked whether protein was leaking into the urine, an early sign of kidney damage.
The researchers also examined how kidney disease differed by age, sex, race, education, income, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. They discovered that health inequalities remained a major concern.
Black Americans continued to have much higher rates of chronic kidney disease than White Americans, with almost one in five affected. The gap did not improve over the ten-year study period. Men also showed a slight increase in kidney disease, while rates among women stayed relatively stable.
Another important finding involved education. The difference in kidney disease rates between people with lower and higher levels of education became larger over time. This suggests that social and economic conditions, including access to healthcare, healthy food, education, and preventive care, may strongly influence kidney health alongside biological factors.
The researchers noted that kidney disease is becoming increasingly connected with diabetes and heart disease. Diabetes is already one of the leading causes of kidney damage because high blood sugar gradually injures the tiny blood vessels that filter waste inside the kidneys. At the same time, damaged kidneys place extra strain on the heart and blood vessels, creating a cycle in which each disease makes the others worse.
Recent years have seen the introduction of new medicines such as SGLT2 inhibitors and finerenone that can help protect kidney function in people with diabetes. Even with these important advances, the overall burden of chronic kidney disease has not fallen, suggesting that more people are developing diabetes-related kidney damage or that these treatments are not reaching everyone who could benefit.
The researchers believe this growing overlap between kidney disease, diabetes, and heart disease reflects what the American Heart Association calls cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome. Instead of treating each disease separately, doctors may increasingly need to manage all three together because they are closely connected.
Overall, this study provides a valuable picture of kidney health across the United States using a large nationally representative sample. However, it cannot prove exactly why diabetes-related kidney disease increased.
Future research will need to examine whether earlier diagnosis, wider use of kidney-protecting medicines, healthier lifestyles, and better diabetes prevention can reverse this trend.
The findings also highlight the importance of regular kidney testing for people with diabetes, since early treatment offers the best chance of slowing kidney damage before symptoms appear.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about a cure for type 2 diabetes, and these vegetables could protect against kidney damage in diabetes.
For more health information, please see recent studies about bone drug that could lower risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing eating more eggs linked to higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
