Study: Fitness Matters More Than Weight Loss for Kidney Disease Risk

ISLAMABAD, OCT 04 (ONLINE): Higher physical fitness and maintaining body weight lowered the risk of chronic kidney disease in adults with obesity, according to a study published Thursday in Obesity. But losing weight did not lower that risk.

“We need to know more about the optimal strategies to reduce kidney disease risk in adults with obesity,” said study author Meera Harhay, MD, the medical director of clinical research at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

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Obesity is a well-established risk factor for kidney disease, a leading cause of death in the United States. Hormonal changes related to extra body fat can increase body fluid volume, raise blood pressure, and promote insulin resistance. All that forces your kidneys to work harder to filter your blood, leading to damage and scarring.

“The kidneys can only compensate so much before there is permanent damage,” said Harhay, an epidemiologist and a kidney transplant expert.
In the study, Harhay and colleagues used data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a National Institutes of Health initiative that followed 6,814 middle-aged adults in six U.S. cities, tracking their weight and other health measures over 10 years. From that pool, the researchers zeroed in on 1,208 adults who fit the medical definition of obese but did not start the study with kidney disease or diabetes (which can cause kidney disease).

They found that for every 11 pounds people gained, their risk of kidney disease shot up by 34%. But losing weight did not decrease the risk. This suggests that preventing weight gain may be more important than weight loss.

Using the participants’ self-reported walking pace as a measure of fitness, the researchers found that those who walked slower than 2 miles per hour were 57% more likely to get kidney disease than faster walkers.