Chronic kidney disease: prevalence and risk factors (literature review)

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a complex of syndromes that occurs as an outcome of various kidney diseases or as a complication caused by diseases of other organs; it often exerts maximum influence on prognosis for a primary disease. It seems an urgent task to improve early CKD diagnostics and reveal risk factors that can cause unfavorable clinical course and development of the pathology. Finding solution to this task will allow reducing terms and improving organization of specialized medical aid provided for patients. The issue related to detection of health risk factors is especially pressing in countries with low and middle incomes. National and international efforts aimed at preventing, detecting, and treating chronic kidney diseases are necessary for decreasing worldwide mortality and morbidity. The article presents a review of literature data accumulated in PubMed, Elsevier, and Google Scholar databases on epidemiologic issues concerning chronic kidney diseases. We managed to find more than 150 materials; more than 40 articles out of them were analyzed and they turned out to dwell on different aspects of the issue. Special attention is paid to CKD prevalence among population depending on a country, ethnic group, age, and sex as well as to examining risk factors occurring in a specific region or a country. Literature analysis allowed concluding that CKD prevalence has grown substantially over the last 10 years. Among risk factors there are medical parameters (prevalence of chronic cardiovascular diseases and endocrine system diseases) and social and demographic conditions. It is shown that CKD tends to occur more frequently among people from black race than those from other races. But black people have higher survivability after dialysis than their white counterparts from the same age groups. Awareness about CKD risk factors among population and doctors providing primary medical assistance predetermines efficiency of early diagnostic and further treatment of the disease in low income countries

Keywords

• chronic kidney disease
• glomerular filtration rate
• terminal kidney failure
• prevalence
• risk factors
• epidemiology