19.2 million U.S. adults have chronic kidn...( in their urine. Dr. Coresh explained ...),Health

Researchers used the recently developed National Kidney Foundation Clinical Practice Guidelines which provide a standardized definition of chronic kidney disease and its stages to a nationally representative sample of 15,625 non-institutionalized adults who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). Participants were also interviewed about their history of diabetes and hypertension. Chronic kidney disease stages are based on estimated kidney function measured as GFR. A healthy young adult has a GFR of 130 ml/min/1.73 m2. The researchers found an estimated 5.9 million individuals (3.3%) had Stage 1/normal kidney function with protein found in urine on two occasions; 5.3 million (3%) had Stage 2/ mildly decreased kidney function with protein found in urine on two occasions; 7.6 million (4.3%) had Stage 3/moderately decreased kidney function (GFR 30-59 ml/min/1.73 m2); 400,000 (0.2%) had Stage 4/severly decreased kidney function (GFR 15-29 ml/min/1.73 m2); and 300,000 (0.2%) had Stage 5 or kidney failure.

Older age was strongly associated with a higher prevalence of moderately or severely decreased kidney function. In addition, moderately decreased kidney function was most prevalent among non-Hispanic whites, followed by non-Hispanic blacks, then individuals of other ethnicities. Kidney disease was least prevalent in Mexican Americans. These results also raise the possibility that minority populations have a higher risk of kidney failure because of more rapid progression of kidney disease after its onset, rather than a larger pool of individuals with milder kidney disease.

The study estimates of decreased kidney function far exceed the number of cases of treated end-stage re
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Contact: Kenna L. Brigham
paffairs@jhsph.edu
410-955-6878
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
6-Jan-2003