Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at a sharply heightened risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a team of researchers from NIH and several Boston-area institutions.
The team examined 3,258 grown children and spouses of children of the original participants in the famous Framingham Heart Study, which started in 1948. Of the subjects, 281 (8.6%) had CKD.
Hypertension and diabetes were present in 71.2% and 23.5% of those with CKD, respectively, compared with 42.7% and 11.9% of those without CKD.
Writing in Archives of Internal Medicine (2006;166:1884-1891), the authors conclude that CKD, “with its high burden of vascular disease risk factors and associated risk of adverse CVD outcomes, represents an important public-health concern.”