PHILADELPHIA—The risk of myocardial infarction is just as high in patients who have chronic kidney disease (CKD) as in those who have diabetes, and their subsequent mortality is even higher, according to a report published online June 19 in the Lancet.
"Our research suggests that there is a strong case for considering CKD to be a coronary heart disease risk equivalent," as is the case with diabetes. This means that people with CKD, like diabetes patients, "are at a comparable risk of coronary events to those who have previously had a heart attack," Dr. Marcello Tonelli of the departments of medicine and public health sciences at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, said in a press statement accompanying the release of the report.
Tonelli and his associates used information from two large, population-based cohorts – the Alberta Kidney Disease Network and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2006 – to compare the risks of hospitalization for MI among adults with previous MI, adults with diabetes mellitus but no kidney disease, and adults with CKD but no diabetes. The 1,268,029 study subjects were followed for a median of four years, during which time 1 percent (11,340) were admitted for MI.
Compared with healthy adults, the unadjusted rate of MI during follow-up was highest in people with a history of MI (18.5 per 1,000 person-years) but was also significantly elevated in those with diabetes (5.4 per 1,000 person-years) or CKD (6.9 per 1,000 person-years).
