Sepsis and tropical fever were found to be the most common causes of community acquired-acute kidney injury (CA-AKI) in India, whereby kidneys fail to filter waste from the blood, according to a new research published in The Lancet Regional Health-Southeast Asia journal.
While sepsis refers to the presence of pus-forming bacteria or their toxins in the blood or tissues, tropical fever is the infection characterised by fever and unique to or prevalent in tropical or subtropical regions.
Conducted across nine tertiary care centres in India, the study also found that the most common comorbidities in these CA-AKI patients included hypertension and diabetes.
The team of scientists, including those from Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Uttar Pradesh, and Madras Medical College, Tamil Nadu, observed that presenting CA-AKI patients to tertiary care units was associated with high mortality.
They also found that a significant number of these patients progressed to developing chronic kidney disease (CKD).
The findings underscored the high mortality risk among patients from most deprived socio-economic groups, the researchers said, urging for immediate attention for targeted interventions. Previous evidence has found CA-AKI to be common in India and other low and middle-income countries (LMICs). For the study, the team included 3,711 CA-AKI patients older than 12 years and admitted to either the inpatient or emergency departments of the participating hospitals. They defined CA-AKI as “AKI occurring outside the hospital setting – typically in the community or home setting”. AKI recently replaced the term “acute renal failure”.
The researchers constructed the participants’ clinical, demographic, and socioeconomic profiles, along with collecting data regarding their risk factors and causes, comorbidities, complications and patient outcomes. Source: PTI