Research continues to mount indicating that many people who’ve had COVID-19 go on to suffer a range of adverse conditions months after their initial infections.
In a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, researchers found a big decline in kidney function among those dubbed COVID-19 long-haulers — and even among those who had mild infections of the virus.
They showed that those infected with SARS-CoV-2 are at an increased likelihood of developing kidney damage as well as chronic and end-stage kidney diseases.
Known as the silent killer, kidney dysfunction and disease tend to be free of pain and other symptoms — so much so that the National Kidney Foundation estimates that 90% of people with ailing kidneys don’t know it.
Kidney disease affects 37 million people in the U.S. and is one of the nation’s leading causes of death.
The findings coincide with a surge in COVID-19 infections spurred by the delta variant. More than 38 million people have been diagnosed with the virus since the pandemic started.
In the study, the team analyzed medical records in a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation’s largest integrated health-care delivery system.
The researchers created a controlled dataset that included health information from more than 1.7 million healthy and COVID-infected veterans from March 1, 2020, through March 15, 2021.
Of those veterans, 89,216 had confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses and made it through the acute phase (the first 30 days of the disease).
The COVID-19 patients in the study were mostly men and in their late 60s; however, the researchers also analyzed data that included 151,289 women — including 8,817 with COVID-19 — and adults of all ages.
The team found the risk of decreased kidney function is highest among people who were in the ICU; however, the risk extends to all patients, even those who had milder cases of COVID-19.
Compared with patients who did not become infected, people who contracted the virus but did not need to be hospitalized for it had a 15% higher risk of suffering from a major adverse kidney event such as chronic kidney disease, a 30% higher risk of developing acute kidney injury, and a 215% (more than twofold) higher risk of acquiring end-stage kidney disease.
The latter occurs when the kidneys can no longer effectively remove waste from the body. In such cases, dialysis or a kidney transplant is needed to keep patients alive.
The risk increased for patients hospitalized for COVID-19, and considerably so for those who were in the ICU for the virus: seven times the risk of experiencing a major adverse kidney event, eight times the risk of acute kidney injury and 13 times the risk of end-stage kidney disease.
The team says kidney disease is one important facet of the multifaceted long COVID-19. It is a critical component of the long COVID-19 story, and it must be taken into account when caring for people with long COVID-19.
If you care about long COVID, please read studies about signs of ‘long COVID’ can be found in eyes and findings of these 3 things linked to ‘long COVID’ syndrome.
For more information about long COVID and health, please see recent studies about many people with mild COVID-19 still have long-term symptoms and results showing that this common health problem may increase risk of ‘long COVID-19’.
The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. One author of the study is Ziyad Al-Aly, MD.
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