Kidney Disease - Here's What You Need To Know

Symptoms are elusive—here’s what you need to know

- Lisa Fields

Dick De Jonge used to ride his bike to work daily, but in 2014, he noticed his cycling was getting slower. “I thought there was something wrong with my bicycle,” says de Jonge, 69, of Groningen in the Netherlands. But he was the one slowing down: he didn’t know it, but he'd lost much of his kidney function. One night he went to bed, exhausted, and slept for two days.

Concerned, he saw his doctor. His blood pressure was so high that he was sent to the hospital, where a urine test confirmed kidney problems. De Jonge had cancer in one kidney, and the other functioned at just seven per cent.

THOUGH MANY PEOPLE don’t realize they have it, kidney disease doesn't discriminate: it affects men and women of all ages and ethnicities. Last year, it became the tenth-ranked cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation, rising from 13th in 2019. Says Dr. Raymond Vanholder, president of the European Kidney Health Alliance in Brussels, one in ten people in Western Europe, and one in 13 people in Central and Eastern Europe, have some form of kidney disease. And according to some estimates, twice as many Europeans could have kidney disease in ten years’ time.

Why is it so prevalent? Because the two most common causes of the disease are hypertension—high blood pressure—and diabetes, and these have become more widespread (less-common causes include infections and genetic conditions; kidney stones can also raise risk for chronic kidney disease).