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Https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/articles/2023/transforming-kidney-health-burden-ckd.html
Transforming kidney health and the burden of CKD
LAST UPDATED
18 March 2024
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED:
15 June 2023
843.6 million people worldwide are living with chronic kidney disease (CKD)1, a progressive and potentially fatal condition.2 Yet, the majority remain undiagnosed and untreated.3
At AstraZeneca, we believe we have an important role to play in driving better patient outcomes. We are aiming to help reduce progression to kidney failure by 20% by 2025. Through global collaborative initiatives, informed by our real-world evidence (RWE) programme, our ambition is to support healthcare professionals (HCPs) in prioritising CKD diagnosis and management, ensuring patients understand their risk factors and can address these with their HCPs, and to work with stakeholders in prioritising CKD screening at the policy level.
CKD: a silent disease with devastating consequences for patients
It’s staggering to see that although CKD is expected to become the world’s fifth leading cause of mortality by 20404, up to 90% of people living with CKD don’t know they have it.3
Patients with CKD experience decreased kidney function and if untreated, their CKD could eventually progress to life-threatening kidney failure5 although most patients are more likely to die from cardiovascular causes before getting to this stage.6 Many of these patients will need renal replacement therapy such as dialysis to replace their kidney function7, which significantly affects their quality of life.8
Even before progression, people living with CKD report that their lives and daily activities are impacted by the disease and its complications.9 They can experience significant physical limitations, loss of quality of life, unemployment, emotional and cognitive disorders, social isolation and premature death.10 If a patient’s CKD advances to where they need dialysis, they may experience additional stress from the financial impact and time commitment of dialysis, while feeling like a burden to caregivers.11
CKD does not just impact patients at the individual level, but also society and the environment more broadly. CKD is a leading cause of health expenditure worldwide,12 and its burden weighs heavily on individuals and healthcare systems alike. In high-income countries across the world, 2–3% of the annual healthcare budget is spent on renal replacement therapy.13
Additionally, treatments for CKD, like dialysis, leave a considerable carbon footprint and can cause environmental pollution due to frequent medical interventions, the use of products that generate medical waste, energy to run machines and water consumption.10 Dialysis remains one of the most carbon-intensive fields in medicine, consuming enormous amounts of water and producing high amounts of medical waste.14 In a year, globally dialysis uses more than 169 billion litres of water10 and creates more
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