A joint research team has confirmed that the risk of end-stage renal disease requiring transplantation or dialysis increases in cancer patients.
The team, led by Professors Kim Chang-sung and Kim Su-hwan at Chonnam National University Hospital and Han Kyung-do at Soongsil University, concluded so after using the data of 2,473,095 people registered with the National Health Insurance Service.
The research team compared and analyzed 824,365 cancer patients without end-stage renal disease against a group of about 1.64 million adults who had the same age, age, glomerular filtration rate, hypertension, and diabetes history but had no history of cancer. As a result, the team confirmed that the risk of end-stage renal disease was 2.29 times higher in cancer patients than in those who did not.
Notably, due to analysis by 23 specific cancer types, multiple myeloma patients had the highest risk of developing the end-stage renal disease (19 times), followed by hematologic cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, kidney, ovarian, and liver cancer, the Korean Society of Nephrology Society said in a news release Tuesday.
The team stressed that the results showed consistent age, smoking, exercise, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension trends.
“This study newly shows that cancer can progress to end-stage renal failure,” Professor Kim Su-hwan said. “Therefore cancer patients need a multidisciplinary monitoring and prevention strategy for renal function loss.”
In the future, it is necessary to study how early detection of kidney damage in cancer patients and treatment to prevent progression to end-stage renal failure will affect the prognosis of cancer patients, Kim added.
American Journal of Kidney Disease published the results of the study in its online edition.