What are the Causes of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) includes conditions that damage your kidneys and decrease their abilities to make you healthy. If kidney disease gets worse, wastes can build up to high levels to make you sick. Chronic Kidney disease may cause such conditions as high blood pressure, anemia, poor nutritional health, weak bones and nerve damage, and increase your risks of heart disease and other blood vessel diseases. There is no single cause of chronic kidney disease. It can be caused by a genetic disorder or secondary to another medical condition. Ruling out the causes, early detection and treatment can help chronic kidney disease (CKD) from getting worse.

What causes Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)? The two main leading causes of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) include Diabetes and high blood pressure, which account for two-thirds of all clinical cases of end-stage kidney failure. Diabetes with persistent high blood glucose can cause damage to many organs of the body, including the kidneys, heart, brain, nerves, eyes, etc. High blood pressure occurs when pressure against blood vessels is too high. When hypertension or poorly controlled, it can also cause many blood vessel diseases, such as strokes, eye disease, heart and kidney diseases. Not only can hypertension cause kidney disease, kidney disease can also raise blood pressure.

There are many other conditions that can also cause Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD):

Glomerular Nephritis, which refer to a group of conditions that can cause inflammation and injury on renal glomerular filtering units. It is third common cause of chronic kidney disease.

Inherited kidney disorders, such as Polycystic Kidney Disease, which causes clusters of cysts to develop in the kidneys and damage healthy functioning renal cells.

Kidney deformities that occur as a baby develops in its mother’s womb. For example, a narrowing of renal arteries may affect normal blood flow and cause urine to flow back up to the kidney. This can cause infections, kidney stones or damage the kidneys.

Long-term use of certain medications may also damage the kidneys. Examples include such nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines as ibrofen and celecoxib.

Some obstructive factors, such as kidney stones, tumors or enlarged prostate gland in men can also cause damage to the kidneys.

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a slow progressing disorder that can cause gradual loss of renal functions over prolonged periods of time. People should be alert for early signs of kidney disease, and treat it positively and develop healthy lifestyle so as to stop the condition from deteriorating into an advanced stage.