Study: Obesity can lead to kidney failure

Study: Obesity can lead to kidney failure

Obese people run a very high risk of kidney failure, according to the latest study by the researchers at the University of California at San Francisco.

Even “mildly overweight” people have 90% more risk of developing the end-stage renal disease as compared to thin people. While the seriously obese people have a staggering 700% more chance of developing the condition.

“There are more and more people with kidney failure, but it hasn't been appreciated much that kidney failure can be a consequence of obesity,” said Chi-yuan Hsu, assistant professor of medicine at the University and chief author of the study. “We think this study is important because it demonstrates quite convincingly that people who are obese or overweight are at much higher risk of kidney failure.”

Due to obesity the kidneys have to work over time and gradually they lose their ability to treat waste. This stage is called renal failure and the patient can only survive if kept on dialysis or if given a kidney transplant. “Kidney failure happens very slowly,” Hsu said. “As the person gets bigger, hyper-filtration occurs and this over filtration is what tears the kidneys down.”

The researchers analyzed health data for 320,000 Northern California members of the Kaiser Permanente Insurance Plan. The data spanned from the year 1964 to 1985. The researchers obtained information from the U.S. Renal Data System and observed that as many as 1,471 subjects had developed the condition of kidney failure over an average follow-up period of 26 years. The researchers calculated the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the subjects and could directly correlate obesity to kidney failure.

Hsu said that the results of the study “add to a growing list of health problems related to obesity”. Obesity has previously been related to ailments like heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.