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Yale Study: COVID Can Severely Injure The Kidneys

Courtesy of Pixabay

COVID-19 may lead to a new and worse form of acute kidney injury. That’s according to Yale School of Medicine in a finding published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this month.

Yale professor F. Perry Wilson said acute kidney injuries are surprisingly common — around 10% to 15% of people in the hospital get them from things like infections or reactions to medicine. But nearly a third of people who go to the hospital with COVID-19 end up dealing with acute kidney injuries.

“So it really seemed that COVID is injuring the kidneys in a new way. Not sort of the common ways we thought of for other infections,” Wilson said.

Yale researchers looked at COVID-19 patients six months after they left the hospital. They found they had about 12 times more long-term kidney damage than other patients. Wilson said scientists still aren’t sure why, though.

“Might have to do with the high levels of inflammation that happen in patients with COVID. It might have something to do with the propensity of COVID to cause tiny blood clots and things like that, which can be damaging to the kidney, but clearly we need more research in this area,” Wilson said

But the research is already helping scientists understand more about how COVID-19 works — and how all kinds of viruses can damage kidneys.

“COVID is teaching us that not all acute kidney injury is the same. That there are ways to hurt the kidney that are very different between one infection and another,” Wilson said.

Wilson said he and his team will keep following patients long-term to see what the future holds for their recovery.

Copyright 2021 WSHU

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He fell in love with sound-rich radio storytelling while working as an assistant reporter at KBIA public radio in Columbia, Missouri. Before coming back to radio, he worked in digital journalism as the editor of Newtown Patch. As a freelance reporter, his work for WSHU aired nationally on NPR. Davis is a proud graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism; he started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.

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The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

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Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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