People With Sickle Cell Disease at Increased Risk of Death From Kidney Disease

Patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) are more likely to die from end-stage kidney disease (ESKD), despite declining ESKD deaths over the last 20 years. 

A team from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee, analyzed the outcomes of sickle cell patients with ESKD from 1998 to 2017 based on data from the United States Renal Data System registry.

The 19-year-old study revealed that patients with sickle cell disease were more likely to die from ESKD than those without the blood disorder. According to the researchers, “this disparity in survival was magnified,” with sickle cell disease patients having almost three times the risk of death than patients without the disorder after the first ESKD event.

The researchers also found that patients with sickle cell disease were less likely to receive a kidney transplant. According to the researchers, Sickle cell patients were 76% less likely to have a preventative kidney transplant than to start dialysis. These patients were, however, more likely to have received ongoing kidney care before developing ESKD than to have received no care. In addition, people with sickle cell disease and ESKD were 51% less likely to receive a kidney transplant than those without SCD.

“It remains alarming that patients with SCD-ESKD were less likely to receive a kidney transplant as compared to non-SCD-ESKD patients,” the researchers wrote.

Furthermore, the researchers found that sickle cell patients were diagnosed with ESKD younger than the general population. According to the researchers, sickle cell patients are diagnosed about ten years younger than those without the blood disorder. Specifically, they discovered that the median age of diagnosis for Black patients with sickle cell disease was forty-four. In contrast, the median age for black patients without the blood disorder was fifty-nine. They also found male sickle cell patients were much younger when diagnosed with ESKD than female patients. 

“This study confirms that patients with SCD who develop ESKD continue to experience disparities in [kidney] outcomes. Ongoing research should identify risk factors for ESKD progression, ensure implementation of monitoring for kidney disease, and determine therapies that prevent the development of ESKD.” the researchers wrote.

Source: Sickle Cell Anemia News