Is Chronic Kidney Disease Caused By Your Zip Code?

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the chief causes of death in the United States, which is why it is so necessary to identify groups that are at high risk of it.

Biological factors that increase the risk of CKD are conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

However, these factors don’t explain why people living in some areas are at drastically higher risk than others.

A new study published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases finally sheds some light on this riddle. The answer is quite simple.

Researchers have established that air pollution, especially particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5), is a causal factor for CKD and CKD death.

Some studies have also found that social deprivation could worsen PM2.5-related health effects.

Researchers don’t know whether this also applies to CKD, so the authors of the study decided to find out.

They mined the National Center for Health Statistics for information on causes of death between 1999 and 2019.

They obtained information regarding PM2.5 air pollution from the Atmospheric Analysis Group.

They also consulted the Social Deprivation Index, which categorizes American counties according to socioeconomic status. This index ranks counties with low income, low education, unemployment, low car ownership, crowded housing, renter-occupied housing, and single-parent-family homes as having a low socioeconomic status.

The researchers used all this information to analyze whether socioeconomic deprivation put people at risk of PM2.5-related death due to CKD.

They found what they expected.

1. CKD deaths vary from region to region in the United States.

2. Counties with severe socioeconomic deprivation were exposed to more PM2.5 pollution than wealthier counties were.

3. 18% of the difference in CKD deaths between different regions could be explained by PM2.5.

4. 37% of the difference in CKD deaths between different regions could be explained by PM2.5 and socioeconomic deprivation together.

5. The link between PM2.5 and CKD death was strongest in counties with the most severe socioeconomic deprivation.

This means that both PM2.5 exposure and socioeconomic deprivation, independently and together, are responsible for higher CKD death rates and that deprived areas are disproportionately affected by air pollution.

The good news is that this proves that CKD is influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors, which means that the risk of CKD can be reduced by addressing the same factors.

In fact, thousands of readers have reversed their CKD using simple lifestyle changes explained here…