Have you ever thought that our health has a domino effect? Once you get ill with one disease, you suddently have an increased risk for other diseases. Take, for example, dementia. If you have diabetes type II or a heart disease, than you have more chance to suffer from dementia. A recent Swedish study added a new disease that increases your risk of developing dementia. It’s a chronic kidney disease.

The study found that the rate of dementia increased in people with kidney disease. So how is a chronic kidney disease connected to the brain health?

The main function of our kidney is to filter waste from the blood and eliminate fluids. Even a mild reduction in kidney function can lead to an increased risk of heart/blood vessels disease and infections. Now it turned out that a chronic kidney disease is also linked to the brain malfunctioning.

To know whether your kidney still works appropriate, you need to measure creatinine. It is a waste product from muscles that is removed from the blood by the kidneys and released into the urine. An estimated filtration rate of 90 milliliters (mL) per minute or higher is considered normal in most healthy people.

The researchers found that people 65+ years old with filtration rates of 30 to 59 mL per minute (=moderate chronic kidney disease), had a 71% higher risk of developing dementia compared to those with normal kidney function. People with filtration rates of less than 30 mL per minute had a 162% higher risk!

Researchers also found that a steeper decline in a person’s filtration rates within few years could also increase a risk of a dementia later on.

Why is it important to know? Well, if you have a genetic predisposition to dementia and know the risk factors, you can focus on treating those risk factors to prevent or delay some cases of dementia.

Curious? Here is the source:

https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2021/05/04/WNL.0000000000012113