Excessive Weight in Young Adults Creates Higher Risk for Chronic Kidney Disease in Old Age

A new study shows that overweight young adults have a much higher risk of developing kidney disease by the time they reach old age.

These findings stress the importance of excess weight and the pressure it puts on internal organs, putting obese youths at risk for chronic kidney disease.

The study analyzed a sample of children born in one week in march 1946 in England, Scotland and Wales. Researchers said a total of 4,584 participants from the Medical Research Council National Survey Of Health and Development had available data including body mass index at ages 20, 26, 43 53 and 60 to 64 years. It also found that participants who were overweight beginning early adulthood (ages 26 or 36 years) were twice as likely of having CKD at age 60 to 64 or who had never become overweight.

Those with larger waist-to-hip ratios ages 43 to 53 were more likely to have CKD at age 60 to 64 years.

"We estimated that 36 percent of CKD cases at age 60 to 64 in the current US population could be avoided if nobody became overweight until at least that age, assuming the same association as in the analysis sample," researcher Dr. Dorothea Nitsch, from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in England, said in a statement.  "To our knowledge, we are the first to report how age of exposure to overweight across adulthood may affect kidney disease risk," she said.

Researchers noted that preventing excessive weight gain early in life could help prevent CKD, it is still unclear whether the timing of becoming overweight or the duration of being overweight is what heightens that risk.  

The latest findings published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, emphasize the importance of excess weight as a risk factor for chronic kidney disease.