Kidney Damage, Silent & Painless, Discovered In COVID Survivors: Study

New Delhi: Apparently, it is not enough to survive from COVID-19 for it has now been found that the infection can lead to slow, painless and silent damage of the kidneys.

A research has discovered that the blood-filtering organ of those who have recovered at home can get damaged and escalates with the severity of COVID. Even non-hospitalised sufferers with no renal issues have nearly a twofold increased danger of creating end-stage kidney illness, in contrast with somebody who by no means had COVID, Bloomberg reported.

The findings were reported in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology on Wednesday. Data shows 7.8 extra people needing dialysis or a kidney transplant per 10,000 of these mild-to-moderate Covid patients.

“This is not a small number, if you multiply by the huge number of Americans and also globally who might be ending up with end-stage kidney disease,” Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the medical epidemiology heart on the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Well being Care System in Missouri, was quoted as saying, adding, “This is really huge, and it will literally shape our lives for probably the next decade or more.”

Al-Aly, who led the study, and his colleagues in April mined data collected during the routine delivery of care from the Veterans Health Administration to document the cascade of debilitating effects that plague Covid survivors months after diagnosis, from blood clots, stroke, diabetes and breathing difficulties to heart, liver and kidney damage, depression, anxiety and memory loss.

Al-Aly’s latest research compared the risks of kidney-related conditions in 89,216 VA users who survived Covid against more than 1.7 million counterparts without the pandemic disease, the report added.

“What’s really problematic about kidney disease is that it’s really silent, that it doesn’t really manifest in pain or any other symptoms,” stated Al-Aly, who additionally works as a nephrologist.

Al-Aly and colleagues discovered non-hospitalised COVID sufferers have a 23% elevated danger of struggling acute kidney damage within six months — a situation that impedes the removing of waste and toxins from the blood.

Medical doctors caring for COVID survivors should even be alert for a broad spectrum of kidney illness amongst these sufferers, according to Al-Aly.

“If this is really happening at a wider scale — and we think it is — it’s just a matter of time before we see all of these people hitting the clinics, needing dialysis, needing transplantation that places a lot of burden on the patient himself or herself, and really is very costly to the health care system,” he stated.