Letter: Be aware of chronic kidney disease
By Micki Jackson, Bellingham
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Many people still don’t take the pandemic seriously, even with worrisome variants causing a wave in hospitalizations. Dr. Sudhakar Karlapudi, chief medical and patient safety officer for PeaceHealth in northwest Washington stated, “the peak is way too high for hospitalizations.”
Evidence is accumulating that COVID-19’s ripple effects include an increase in diabetes diagnoses post-recovery, even among mild cases in children. Diabetes is the primary cause of chronic kidney disease; if diabetes cases increase, kidney disease increases. Even before COVID-19, CKD cases were accelerating at a pace faster than for all other noninfectious diseases, according to a study by the St. Louis Veterans Affairs health care system. While deaths in younger people attributable to kidney disease are rare, the numbers are rising. Overall, in ages 20 years and older, CKD deaths increased 58 percent from 2002 to 2016.