— Christine M. Kukka, Project Manager, HBV Advocate
It has been suggested that HBV infection may increase the risk of kidney disease. Taiwanese researchers conducted a nationwide study comparing end stage renal (kidney) disease rates in HBV patients and an uninfected control group and found hepatitis B did increase the risk of kidney disease.
Researchers examined insurance claims data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database over a 12-year period and identified 17,758 HBV-infected adults who had never taken antivirals and compared them to a healthy control group of 71,032. (Antivirals may affect kidney function, so this study looked only at the impact of HBV infection alone.)
The risk of end stage kidney disease was significantly higher in the HBV group (with a cumulative rate of 1.9%) than in the uninfected group (with a 0.49% occurrence). The risk of kidney disease among adults with HBV was highest in men and women under the age of 60.
"Thus, a large national cohort study indicates that untreated chronic HBV infection is associated with increased risk of [end stage kidney disease]," they wrote. "Hence, high-risk HBV-infected patients should have targeted monitoring for the development of [kidney disease]," they wrote in the November issue of the journal Kidney International.
Labels: CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease)
