Severe Covid-19 can lead to kidney failure, according to a study from Mount Sinai Hospital System in New York. Meanwhile, some patients required urgent dialysis.
Findings showed that 46% of patients who were hospitalized with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic developed some form of acute kidney injury. Of those patients, 17% had to undergo urgent dialysis.
The Mount Sinai study was held between February 24 to May 30. The team monitored about 4,000 patients with a median age of 64. Mount Sinai employed an AI tool it co-created in collaboration with RenalytixAI, called KidneyIntelX, that assesses a person’s chances of developing kidney disease.
Severe Covid-19 patients developing kidney disease is a pattern being noticed throughout the US and worldwide, according to Dr. Alan Kliger, co-chair of the American Society of Nephrology Covid-19 Response Team.
He has been collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on trends revealing the impact of the coronavirus on kidneys in patients at hospitals across the country.
“What we have observed is that approximately 10% to 50% of patients with severe Covid-19 that go into intensive care have kidney failure that requires some form of dialysis," he said.
Kidney failure
There are different ways Covid-19 can lead to kidney failure, Dr. Kliger says.
Some data reveals immune systems go into overdrive and develop inflammatory cytokines, known as cytokine storms, which can damage the kidneys as well as other organs.
Biosies revealed that the coronavirus directly targets the kidney through ACE-2 receptors the virus can attach itself to and then infect cells. Meanwhile, patients become severely ill from Covid-19 it can trigger sepsis, which can cause multiple organ failure.
Moreover, ventilators can shrink blood flow through the kidney in patients withlung disease due to Covid-19. This can hurt the organ.
Chronic kidney disease
“The next epidemic will be chronic kidney disease in the US among those who recovered from the coronavirus,” says Dr. Steven Coca, associate professor of nephrology at Mount Sinai Health System and co-founder of RenalytixAI.
“Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic we have seen the highest rate of kidney failure in our lifetimes. It’s a long-term health burden for patients, the medical community -- and the US economy," he said.
Medical experts are employing AI technology to detect biomarkers in Covid-19 patients, such as multiple plasma biomarkers and urine proteomics and RNA sequences. “This will help us do some predictive analysis. We are hoping RNA sequencing may give us some clues,” Dr. Coca says.
Patients with kidney problems including those on dialysis are among the most vulnerable today. According to Dr. Kliger, “this is a group more likely to get the virus, have complications or die. As government officials discuss how to deploy testing nationwide this population must be a priority.”
