Prenatal Risk Factors Tied to Development of Kidney Disease in Children, Study

A study uncovers strong association between certain prenatal risk factors and the elevated risk of chronic kidney disease in babies.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that a risk of developing certain kidney diseases occurs before birth.  In this study they looked at the association between the two conditions including other factors such as birth weight, maternal diabetes and maternal overweight/obesity.

The research team led by Christine Hsu analyzed the data of 1994 patients with children with chronic kidney disease (CKD).  The study also included over 20,032 healthy controls.  Next, the researchers looked for both maternal and infant characteristics linked to the disease in birth records from 1987 to 2008 to data with details of hospital discharge.

The researchers noticed that the prevalence of CKD was nearly 126.7 cases per 100,00 births and the infants with low birth weight suffered a three-fold increased risk of developing childhood CKD when compared to infants born with normal birth weight.

Apart from this, the infants also suffered an increased risk of kidney disease iff their mother developed diabetes during pregnancy of if they were born to obese and overweight mothers.

A study conducted earlier by researchers of the same University revealed that children's risk for CKD depended on the mom's health. They showed that children with CKD were more likely to have mothers who were obese or had diabetes during pregnancy.

"We hope this research leads to further research on ways to reduce kidney disease through either early treatment or prevention that might begin even before birth," said Dr. Hsu. "Previous studies show that strict control of maternal diabetes significantly reduces the risk of congenital malformations in children. We hope our work leads to future studies to investigate whether strict control of maternal diabetes and/or reducing maternal obesity/overweight reduces childhood CKD."

The researchers propose that further studies can look at whether altering the risk factors offers protection to children against chronic kidney disease.

This study was reported in journal of the American Society of Nephrology.