With every 1 degree Celsius increase in daily mean temperature, there is an almost 1 per cent increase in renal disease, with those most impacted being women, children under 4 years of age and those 80+ years of age, said a first of its kind world largest study, ringing alarm bell as the countries face threats of climate change.
The study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas journal, for the first time quantifies the risk and attributable burden for hospitalizations of renal diseases related to ambient temperature using daily hospital admission data from 1816 cities in Brazil.
It revealed that 7.4 per cent of all hospitalisations for renal disease can be attributed to an increase in temperature. In Brazil – where the study was focused – this equated to more than 202,000 cases of kidney disease from 2000-2015. The study looked at a total of 2,726,886 hospitalizations for renal diseases recorded during the study period.
The study, led by Professor Yuming Guo and Dr Shanshan Li, from Planetary Health at Monash University comes as the world focuses on the impact of climate change at the COP26 conference in Glasgow from 31 October.
In 2017, a landmark article in The Lancet declared renal diseases a global public health concern, estimating that almost 2.6 million deaths were attributable to impaired kidney function that year. Importantly the incidence of death from kidney disease had risen 26.6 per cent compared to a decade previously, an increase that this study may indicate was, in part, caused by climate change.
According to Professor Guo, for every 1°C increase in daily mean temperature, there is an almost 1 per cent increase in renal disease, with those most impacted being women, children under 4 years of age and those 80+ years of age.
The associations between temperature and renal diseases were largest on the day of the exposure to extreme temperatures but remained for 1–2 days post-exposure.
In the paper the authors – who are also from the University of Sao Paulo – argue that the study “provides robust evidence that more policies should be developed to prevent heat-related hospitalisations and mitigate climate change.”