News & Events

National Kidney Foundation joins major national initiative to help reduce Americans' salt intake

When it comes to dietary sodium, less is certainly best, yet Americans today consume 50 percent more than the recommended daily quantities of sodium, according to a recent Institute of Medicine Report. The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) joins 45 health organizations in teaming up to combat dangerous levels of dietary sodium as part of the National Salt Reduction Initiative. The Initiative's goal is to reduce the country's salt intake by at least 20 percent over the next five years.

"Diets high in sodium increase blood pressure levels. High blood pressure damages the kidneys over time, and is a leading cause of kidney failure. As high blood pressure rates have increased, kidney disease has spiraled to the point where it now affects 26 million Americans. Strategies that reduce salt intake for the masses can have the effect of lowering blood pressure, and that may be beneficial in easing the burden of chronic kidney disease in this country," says Bryan Becker, MD, NKF President. Learn more here.

Salvo, Simmons honored at

June 24 Annual Meeting

NKF-MD Board President Wanda Lessner congratulates board member Mark Salvo, pictured at left, and longtime volunteer Connie Simmons, at right, during the Annual Meeting on June 24. Salvo received the President's Award and Simmons was named Volunteer of the Year, both for extraordinary service and dedication to the Foundation.

Quest Diagnostics, which has assisted with KEY screenings for the past five years, received the Linda Cameron Award for Patient Services.

Income, race combine to make 'perfect storm'

for chronic kidney disease, study finds

African-Americans with incomes below the poverty line have a significantly higher risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) than higher-income African-Americans or whites of any socioeconomic status, research led by scientists at Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Aging shows.

Conducted in a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of participants from the city of Baltimore, the study could help researchers eventually develop strategies to prevent CKD in vulnerable populations.

Findings from the study are reported online and appear in the June 2010 print edition of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.

Researchers have long known that advanced CKD is more prevalent among African-Americans than among whites in the United States. Similarly, people of low socioeconomic status also have higher rates of the disease than people of higher socioeconomic status. However, it was unknown whether rates of CKD differ between the races among people of low socioeconomic status.

To investigate, Deidra Crews, M.D., an instructor in the Division of Nephrology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and her colleagues used data from Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Lifespan (HANDLS), an ongoing study conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The HANDLS study was started to investigate the influences and interaction of race and socioeconomic status on the development of health disparities in minorities and people of lower socioeconomic status.

In the HANDLS study, researchers from the National Institute on Aging are following 3,722 African-American and white volunteers initially between the ages of 30 and 64 years from 12 diverse neighborhoods in Baltimore. Volunteer participants are visited periodically by a mobile research van where researchers conduct physical examinations, including blood, urine, and blood pressure tests. The participants also answer a variety of questions about other aspects of their lives, such as employment and finances.

Crews and her colleagues focused their analysis on data regarding creatinine, a protein whose abundance in the blood can be a sign of CKD. Of those 2,375 volunteers whose data they reviewed, 1,420 were African-American and 955 were white. About half of the African-Americans and a third of the whites had incomes below the poverty line, about $20,000 for a family of four.

Using the creatinine measures and data on urine albumin, a urine protein that can also signal kidney problems, the researchers diagnosed CKD in 146 of the participants. Rates among African-Americans and whites were similar, with both at about 6 percent.

Prevalence among those with family incomes below the poverty line was 27 percent greater than those living above it. However, when the researchers combined socioeconomic and racial data, they found that low socioeconomic status was associated with a greater prevalence of CKD in African-Americans, but not whites.

African-Americans living below the poverty line were 33 percent more likely to have CKD than whites of similar socioeconomic status. The finding persisted even after Crews and her colleagues accounted for other factors known to increase the rate of CKD, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and tobacco, alcohol and drug use.

Crews and her colleagues believe that there are several reasons why socioeconomic status seems to affect the rates of CKD in African-Americans and whites differently, including genetics, stress, and health behaviors such as diet and exercise habits. She notes that the next step will be to tease out the different factors that might contribute to CKD in low-income African Americans.

“We need to figure out why this is happening so that we can develop effective strategies to prevent CKD from developing,” Crews says.

Crews’s co-investigators included Raquel F. Charles, M.D., M.H.S., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Michele K. Evans, M.D., and Alan B. Zonderman, Ph.D., of the National Institute on Aging; and Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., of the University of California, San Francisco.

Spouses of dialysis patients have reduced kidney function, Taiwanese study finds

Married couples share a bed, a life, children, but chronic illness? A new study, reported in the May issue of American Journal of Kidney Diseases, suggests that a shared home environment and health habits can contribute to the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the spouses of dialysis patients.

"We were surprised to find that the risk of developing chronic kidney disease for spouses of hemodialysis patients is just about as high as it is for blood relatives of these patients," said study author Dr. Hung-Chun Chen of the Division of Nephrology at Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in Taiwan.

To see how environmental factors might contribute to the development of CKD, researchers examined prevalence of chronic kidney disease in 95 spouses and 196 first- and second-degree relatives of 178 hemodialysis patients, who had been undergoing dialysis for between three months and 21 years.

The prevalence of CKD was found to be significantly higher in spouses and relatives of hemodialysis patients, than in a matched control group who were not related or married to patients. Both types of relatives were found to have a noticeably lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a measure of kidney function, and a high rate of albuminuria, or protein in the urine, an early sign of kidney disease.

The spouses had higher rates of habitual smoking, use of herbal medicines and analgesics and high blood pressure than their control group. Additionally, diabetes, which can be caused by obesity and poor health habits, was found to be a significant risk factor for CKD in spouses of dialysis patients.

"In light of these findings, it is critically important that spouses of dialysis patients receive careful screening for chronic kidney disease, in addition to first degree relatives," said Dr. Kerry Willis, Senior Vice President for Scientific Activities, National Kidney Foundation. "Education about the role of environmental factors and health habits in increasing the risk of developing CKD is essential, as well."

Big benefits from eating less salt

Even small reductions in salt intake could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking, obesity and cholesterol levels.

Read the story in the Jan. 21 New York Times quoting Cheryl A.M. Anderson, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of epidemiology and international health at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Anderson was our featured speaker at last fall's Beyond Dialysis event in Baltimore.

Here is a link to the article in The New England Journal of Medicine, and here is a link to a NEJM editorial that was co-written by Dr. Anderson.

NKF-MD E-Newsletter

Catch up on Foundation news by reading archived issues of our e-newsletter here.

KEY Screenings

Find out about upcoming KEY Screening dates and locations.

Liberty Mutual Invitational Golf Tournament

The 2010 Liberty Mutual Invitational will be held on Tuesday, September 14 at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, Maryland.