In a new study, researchers found that maintaining a healthy diet may help prevent kidney disease.
The research was conducted by a team from Bond University, Australia.
Making dietary changes can help slow the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD), but it’s not clear whether a healthy diet is protective against the development of the disease.
In the study, the team analyzed all relevant studies published through February 2019.
The analysis included 18 studies with a total of 630,108 adults who were followed for an average of 10.4 years.
Healthy dietary patterns typically encouraged higher intakes of vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish, and low-fat dairy, and lower intakes of red and processed meats, sodium, and sugar-sweetened beverages.
The researchers found a healthy dietary pattern was associated with a 30% lower incidence of CKD. It was also linked with a 23% lower incidence of albuminuria, an early indicator of kidney damage.
These results add to the accumulating evidence of the potential benefit of eating a healthy dietary pattern—such as the Mediterranean, DASH diet, or National Dietary Guidelines.
A healthy diet could help prevent chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline, cancer, and all-cause mortality.
These results may assist in developing public health prevention programs for CKD, which may assist in reducing the burden of the disease.
The team says focusing on whole foods rather than nutrients can make it easier for clinicians to educate patients and easier for patients to carry out.
An accompanying Patient Voice editorial notes the importance of including children in future studies.
One author of the study is Jaimon Kelly, Ph.D.
The study is published in CJASN.
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