UCSF Study Finds Obesity a Risk Factor in Kidney Failure

UCSF News reports on the relationship between obesity and the development of kidney failure:

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have determined that there is a strong relationship between being obese and developing end-stage renal disease, or kidney failure.

The long-range study found that the obese have up to a seven times greater risk of kidney failure than normal weight people, suggesting that obesity should be considered a risk factor for the condition, and that kidney failure is yet another consequence of obesity.

“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, MD, UCSF assistant professor of medicine and lead 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.”

The study, published in the January 3 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, was conducted jointly with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California Division of Research.

Research findings showed that being even moderately overweight nearly doubles the risk of developing the condition, which is a complete failure of the kidneys to process waste so that dialysis or transplantation become necessary.

“If you are mildly overweight, not even frankly obese, you are roughly 90 percent more likely to develop end-stage renal failure,” Hsu said, with the risk reaching over 700 percent greater for the morbidly obese.