High protein diets may lead to long-term kidney damage among those suffering from chronic kidney disease, according to research led by nephrologist Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, MPH, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine.
The review article, “Nutritional Management of Chronic Kidney Disease,” was published in the New England Journal of Medicineand examines the role nutrition plays in managing chronic kidney disease, a condition that affects approximately 10 percent of the world’s adult population. The article release coincides with the opening of the annual Kidney Week Congress, the world’s premier nephrology meeting, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“The high protein diet that has been used increasingly in recent years to control weight gain and obesity may have deleterious impacts on kidney health in the long term,” said Kalantar-Zadeh, director of the Harold Simmons Center of Kidney Disease Research and Epidemiology, and chief of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, UC Irvine School of Medicine. Colleague Denis Fouque, MD, PhD of the University Claude Bernard Lyon, France, also contributed to this work.
Chronic kidney disease is defined as evidence of structural or functional renal impairment for three or more months and is generally progressive and irreversible. Applying the potential benefits of nutritional management of the condition have remained underutilized in the U.S. and many other countries, said Kalantar-Zadeh.
Source: Science Daily
