Kidney Disease

Kidney Disease in African Americans

• African Americans are four times more likely to develop kidney disease than Caucasians.¹
  
• African Americans make up 12 percent of the population but account for 30 percent of people with kidney disease.¹
  
• Diabetes and high blood pressure account for more than 70 percent of kidney disease in African Americans.¹
  
• A recent NKDEP survey of African Americans found that only 17 percent named kidney disease as a consequence of diabetes, and only eight percent named it as a consequence of high blood pressure.²
  
• African American males ages 22 – 44 are 20 times more likely to develop kidney disease due to high blood pressure than Caucasian males in the same age group.¹
  
• ^-Forty-five percent of African American men with kidney disease received late referrals to nephrologists. In some cases people were not aware they had a problem until they needed dialysis.³

1 U.S. Renal Data System. (2002). National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD
2 National Kidney Disease Education Program. (2003). NKDEP Survey of African-American Adults’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors Related to Kidney
Disease (Draft). National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
3 Kinchen KS, Sadler J, Fink N, et al: The timing of specialist evaluation in chronic kidney disease and mortality. Ann Intern Med 137: 479-486, 2002.

Excerpted and Adapted from NIH Publication No. 04-5577, August 2004.