London-based researchers have discovered a large number of people who contracted severe COVID-19 infections during the first year of the pandemic were left with often fatal kidney damage.
Using data collected through the Ontario Renal Network (ORN), scientists at Lawson Health Research Institute examined 271 patients at 27 renal programs across the province. All of the 271 patients were receiving acute dialysis for kidney injury due to a COVID-19 infection.
“These are patients who did not have kidney disease, or kidney injury prior to contracting COVID-19,” said Dr. Peter Blake, Lawson researcher and ORN medical director. “This is what we call acute kidney injury, and in the case of these severe COVID-19 patients the kidney injury led to the need for acute dialysis.”
What researchers found was that kidney injury occurred in 10 per cent of COVID-19 positive patients that ended up in the ICU.
“Men accounted for more than 75 per cent of this condition, half of the patients were diabetic, and the majority of these patients were not seniors in the later stages of life, but rather middle-aged people,” said Blake.
Roughly 64 per cent of the patients included in the study ended up dying within 90 days. Those who survived remained in hospital for an extended period of time and one in five patients are still on long-term dialysis.
Researchers intend to check back in with the surviving patients to track whether there are any additional health effects six to 12 months after the initial recovery.
The study was recently published in the Clinical Kidney Journal.
