FRIDAY, April 22 (HealthDay News) -- Chronic kidney disease (CKD) appears to be quite prevalent in octogenarians and may be linked with cardiovascular disease (CVD), though different formulas used to assess prevalence provide different results, according to research published online April 21 in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Shani Shastri, M.D., of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues used formulas based on kidney function markers, specifically serum creatinine and cystatin C, to evaluate the prevalence of CKD and its association with CVD in 1,028 octogenarians with a mean age of 86 years; 39 percent of the subjects had prevalent CVD.
The researchers found the prevalence of CKD to be high, ranging from 33 to 51 percent depending on which formula the researchers used, and there did appear to be an association between impaired kidney function and CVD. Subjects with CKD were about 1.5- to two-fold more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease, heart failure, or stroke, than peers without CKD.
"Reduced eGFR [estimated glomerular filtration rate] is highly prevalent in octogenarians, and the eGFRCYS1var equation yielded the lowest prevalence of CKD but the strongest association with prevalent CVD. Because there are no validated estimating equations in the elderly, estimation of kidney function on the basis of on any one equation should be interpreted with caution," the authors write.
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