THURSDAY, May 2, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Preterm and early preterm birth are associated with an increased risk for development of chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study published online May 1 in The BMJ.
Casey Crump, M.D., from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues examined the correlation between preterm birth (gestational age, <37 weeks) and risk for CKD from childhood into mid-adulthood in a national cohort study in Sweden. Data were included for 4,186,615 singleton live births in Sweden during 1973 to 2014. CKD was identified through 2015 from nationwide inpatient and outpatient diagnoses.
The researchers found that during 87.0 million person-years of follow-up, 0.1 percent of participants had a diagnosis of CKD. Preterm birth and very preterm birth (before 28 weeks) correlated with an increased risk for CKD from birth into mid-adulthood (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.94 and 3.01, respectively). Even those born at early term (37 to 38 weeks) had an increased risk (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.30). The correlation between preterm birth and CKD was strongest at ages 0 to 9 years (adjusted hazard ratio, 5.09) and was attenuated but remained elevated at ages 10 to 19 and 20 to 43 years (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.97 and 1.34, respectively).
“People born prematurely need long-term follow-up for monitoring and preventive actions to preserve renal function across the life course,” the authors write.
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