30-40 percent already got afflicted in India: Nephrology Expert

Can Covid-19be kind enough to my Kidneys!! Any patient having diabetes or Kidney illness can be apprehensiveof virus attack specially during ongoing second wave of pandemic in India at least where it has spiked multi-fold in just one month of April. Not long ago a new disease Covid-19 was found (may be invented) in humans which beyond anyone’s imagination changed the entire world for such a long period of time that it’s hard to find a precedent for the same. Dr Luvdeep Dogra, DM Nephrology @ Narayana Hospital in Rajasthan’s state capital, Jaipur told a few media persons on Gmail Meet, “We recognised early that this can be a deadly disease and has an immense potential to send shivers across the world. Today we talk on two aspects, first, COVID in a patient with kidney disease and secondly is kidney diseases which have been described in patients with severe SARS-CoV-2”.

“Like any severe infection it’s rather naive to think that COVID doesn’t affect the kidney, it does involve the kidney and can cause a host of diseases including a new onset kidney disease to worsening of an already ageing kidney to something as severe as a rejection in a functioning graft”, Dr Luvdeep says. As per Centre for Disease Control (CDC), USA, one out of 8 persons (12-15 per cents of population) kidney related diseases that mostly include diabetes mellitus, he says adding, 16 percent of patients are suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

The dialysis patients are at high risk to contract prevalent Corona virus, quoting recent findings Dr Luvdeep points out, “Patients visiting hospitals for dialysis twice/thrice every week and 10 times in a month are susceptible to the deadly virus. So far 30-40 percent patients went on dialysis got afflicted with the virus in the country”.

While interacting Dr Luvdeep revealed many fact saying patients with kidney diseases are inherently immunocompromised and visit hospitals frequently it’s no surprise that COVID is usually under detected, more severe and fast progressing in patients with kidney disease and obviously this is in proportion to the severity of Kidney disease.

Quoting a recent study from Journal American Society Nephrology (July, August 2020),titled: “High Prevalence of Asymptomatic Covid-19 Infection in Haemodialysis Patients Detected Using Serological Screening”, he said, “Patients with ESKD (End Stage Kidney Disease) may also be at an increased risk of dying from Covid-19. In one study, for example, nearly one third of hospitalised dialysis patients with Covid-19 died. In another study, one half of critically ill dialysis patients died within 28 days of admission to the ICU. The overall mortality among dialysis patients with Covid-19 was approximately 20 percent in two such studies”.

When asked, so what do we do? Vaccinate all?

 He said, “Obviously yes, but remember vaccinating a country as big as ours is not going to be a cake walk, vaccination generates immunity over a period of weeks to month, so it’s not a ready solution either, also unfortunately we don’t have enough evidence on how much it protects dialysis patients from Covid infection”.

So what next? On another quiz he said, “It’s high time we understand the importance of prevention, it’s easy too. Just follow a “Covid healthy behaviour”, always wear mask when you have people around you or you go out, maintain social distancing, limit unnecessary visits and visitors and then follow a good hand hygiene”.

Is it that difficult? He smiled saying, “An appropriate behaviour may be our sole protection until we vaccinate our population to a critical level to develop ‘herd-immunity’ and beyond that too. Follow these precautions as Covid is merciless in its ways!”