kidney disease – Helen Jaques

Make it a DIET coke break, for the sake of your kidneys

February 11, 2009 8 Comments

Diet coke break New research published in PLoS One has shown that drinking two or more fizzy drinks a day can double a woman’s chance of developing signs of kidney disease – but only if she drinks full-sugar sodas.

David A Shoham and colleagues studied data from more than 9,000 individuals in the population-based National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999–2004). They found that women who drank two or more cans of soda per day were nearly twice as likely to develop early signs of kidney disease compared with women who consumed fewer sugary soft drinks. Women who drank diet soda were not at increased risk of kidney disease, nor were men.

The rise in diabetes, obesity and kidney disease in the US has paralleled an increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup in American food. High fructose corn syrup is used in particular as a cheap way to sweeten fizzy drinks; thus, the authors investigated whether consumption of soft drinks is associated with albuminuria, a sensitive marker of early kidney damage.

In total, 11% of the sample population were found to have albumnuria, and 17% of the study group drank two or more sugary soft drinks per day. Individuals who drank more than two fizzy drinks a day were 40% more likely to have albuminuria than were participants with a more moderate intake of soda. Consumption of diet soda, however, was not associated with albuminura.

When the authors broke down their results by gender, they found that women who reported drinking two or more sodas in the previous 24 hours were 1.86 times more likely to have albuminuria than were women who drank less soda. Drinking fizzy drinks had no significant effect on the risk of albuminuria in men.

An analysis of type of soda showed that consumption of sugary non-colas was most strongly linked with albuminuria, whereas sugary cola and diet cola and non-cola drinks showed no such association.

The authors conclude that the correlation between drinking sugary sodas and albuminuria indicates that high fructose corn syrup is in part responsible for the increase in kidney disease in the US. According to the National Kidney Foundation, about 26 million American adults have chronic kidney disease.

Dr Shoham, however, has said. “I don’t think there is anything demonic about high fructose corn syrup per se … People are consuming too much sugar. The problem with high fructose corn syrup is that it contributes to over consumption. It’s cheap, it has a long shelf life and it allows you to buy a case of soda for less than $10.”
————————————————————————————————–
Shoham DA et al. (2008) Sugary Soda Consumption and Albuminuria: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2004 PLoS ONE 3 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003431

Herbal remedies and acute kidney disease

October 11, 2008 No Comments

Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology has recently published a review by Luyckx and Naicker highlighting the link between traditional medicines and kidney injury.

Traditional and herbal remedies are widely used worldwide, with as many as 80% of people in some populations using such treatments. The use of herbal remedies becoming increasing common in Western countries, as shown by a 2002 survey that found that 36% of people in the US use alternative or complementary medicines.

Herbal therapies all pass through the kidney on their way out of the body; consequently, many have been associated with acute kidney disease. Luyckx and Naicker report that “folk remedies account for up to 35% of cases of acute kidney injury and mortality rates for acute kidney injury range from 24% to 75%.”

The herbal remedies most commonly used in the US include echinacea, which is used as an immunostimulant, and St John’s wort, which is used to treat depression among other things. Echinacea, however, has been associated with acute kidney injury and St John’s Wort with kidney transplant rejection.

Various factors besides direct toxicity of the agent can contribute to kidney injury, such as contamination of the preparation or incorrect administration. In addition, the type of nephrotoxicity experienced by an individual taking a herbal remedy is dependent on which part of the kidney is affected, and the authors discuss these factors in more detail in their review.

Luyckx and Naicker do point out that the effects of herbal remedies are something of an unknown quantity; for example, some studies have shown that cranberry decreases the risk of kidney stones, whereas other studies find that cranberry increases this risk.

The review concludes by saying “The incidence and prevalence of acute kidney injury associated with the use of traditional remedies is unknown and probably varies greatly from place to place. Since the use of traditional remedies is common worldwide, it is probably safe to assume that the incidence of acute kidney injury is not high. Individual morbidity, however, can be considerable.”