What causes Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease occurs when a disease or condition impairs kidney function, causing kidney damage to worsen over several months or years. Diseases and conditions that cause chronic kidney disease include:

  • Diabetes: Diabetes occurs when your blood sugar remains too high. Over time, unmanaged blood sugar can cause damage to many organs in your body, including the kidneys and heart and blood vessels, nerves, and eyes.
  • High blood pressure: High blood pressure occurs when your blood pressure against the walls of your blood vessels increases. If uncontrolled or poorly controlled, high blood pressure can be a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, and chronic kidney disease. Also, chronic kidney disease can cause high blood pressure.
  • Glomerulonephritis: Glomerulonephritis is a group of diseases that cause inflammation and damage the kidney’s filtering units. These disorders are the third most common type of kidney disease.
  • Interstitial nephritis (in-tur-STISH-ul nuh-FRY-tis), an inflammation of the kidney’s tubules and surrounding structures
  • Inherited diseases: Polycystic kidney disease, or PKD, is a common inherited disease that causes large cysts to form in the kidneys and damage the surrounding tissue.
  • Kidney and urinary tract abnormalities before birth: Malformations that occur as a baby develops in its mother’s womb. For example, a narrowing may occur that prevents normal outflow of urine and causes urine to flow back up to the kidney. This causes infections and may damage the kidneys.
  • Autoimmune diseases: When the body’s defense system, the immune system, turns against the body, it’s called an autoimmune disease. Lupus nephritis is one such autoimmune disease that results in inflammation (swelling or scarring) of the small blood vessels that filter wastes in your kidney.
  • Other causes: Obstructions caused by kidney stones or tumors can cause kidney damage. An enlarged prostate gland in men or repeated urinary infections can also cause kidney damage.
  • Vesicoureteral reflux, a condition that causes urine to back up into your kidneys
  • Recurrent kidney infection, also called pyelonephritis (pie-uh-low-nuh-FRY-tis)
  • Drugs and toxins: such as lead poisoning, long-term use of some medications including NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like ibuprofen and naproxen, and IV street drugs — can permanently damage your kidneys. So can being around some types of chemicals over time.

Risk factors

Factors that can increase your risk of chronic kidney disease include:

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  • Heart (cardiovascular) disease
  • Smoking
  • Obesity
  • Being Black, Native American or Asian American
  • Family history of kidney disease
  • Older age
  • Frequent use of medications that can damage the kidneys

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