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Diabetes is the leading cause of Chronic Kidney Failure, and uncontrolled or poorly controlled high blood pressure is the second.

Chronic Kidney Disease has a genetic component, knowing if you are at increased genetic risk can help you assess your overall risk.

See what your personalized genetic risk assessment could look like.

Knowing your genetic risk for Chronic Kidney Disease is knowing more about your overall risk

Kidney disease is most often caused by diabetes or high blood pressure

The leading risk factors for Chronic Kidney Disease are other diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, that impair kidney function. Both diseases gradually damage the tiny nephrons in the kidneys, decreasing their ability to filter the blood and maintain adequate kidney function.

Other risk factors for Chronic Kidney Disease are:

• Age – the risk of Chronic Kidney Disease increases with age.
• Glomerulonephritis, a group of diseases that cause inflammation and damage to nephrons in the kidneys.
• Some heritable diseases, such as polycystic kidney disease, which causes large cysts to form in the kidneys and damages the surrounding tissue.
• Congenitial malformations, such as a narrowing of the ureter leading from the kidney, causing urine to flow back up to the kidney. This causes infections and may gradually damage the kidneys.
• Diseases that affect the body’s immune system, such as Lupus.
• Obstructions caused by problems like kidney stones, kidney tumors or an enlarged prostate gland in men.
• Repeated urinary infections can predispose people to reduced kidney function.
• Family history of Chronic Kidney Disease or kidney failure – Chronic Kidney Disease runs in families, so you may have an increased risk if your mother, father, sister, or brother has suffered Chronic Kidney Disease or kidney failure.
• Ethnicity – people of certain ethnic backgrounds have a relatively high rate of diabetes or high blood pressure, and an elevated risk of Chronic Kidney Disease. Thus, for example, African Americans have a fourfold risk of kidney failure relative to Americans of European descent. For Native Americans the risk is threefold and for Hispanic Americans twofold.

If you have any of these risk factors, you should consult your doctor or healthcare provider about your concerns. Since Chronic Kidney Disease usually causes no symptoms in its early stages, only blood tests can detect kidney problems early. Anyone at increased risk for Chronic Kidney Disease should be routinely tested for decreased kidney function.

In the majority of cases, Chronic Kidney Disease can be detected with two simple tests, one to detect an abnormal concentration of protein in the urine and a blood test to estimate the glomerular filtration rate (eGFR).

This content was last reviewed on February 09, 2010.

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