Being skinny could be fatal for dialysis patients

A new study presented a shocking revelation for kidney patients. This study claims that dialysis patients with low body fat are apparently at an augmented threat of death even after being matched against patients with the maximum level of body fat percentage.

By means of near-infrared interactance technology, the experts gauged body fat percentage in about 671 hemodialysis patients from around 8 California dialysis centers. Five-year mortality rates of patients at diverse stages of body fat percentage were compared.

It was seen that the mortality rate was apparently maximum for dialysis patients with less than 10 percent body fat i.e. 2.5 to 3 times more as opposed to those with body fat of 20 to 30 percent. The augmented danger of death for patients with extremely low body fat apparently stayed the same following adjustment for age, sex, race, other ailments and major laboratory outcomes. Additional examinations via continuous values of body fat supposedly established a straight, linear association between body fat and mortality risk.

“The higher the body fat, the greater the survival,” commented Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, PhD, principal investigator at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed).

He further mentioned, “Our study indicates that body fat may be protective in dialysis patients. The results add to the increasing number of reports about the ‘obesity paradox’ or ‘reverse epidemiology’ in patients with chronic kidney disease and other chronic diseases.”

He added, ” Counter-intuitively, higher body mass index is associated with greater survival in hemodialysis patients. We hypothesized that very low body fat — less than 10 percent — would be a strong predictor of mortality.”

Even though more study is required, the outcome apparently proposes that the obesity paradox could be clarified by an augmented danger of death for patients with extremely low body fat, as opposed to those with average or even exceedingly high body fat percentage.

The study is presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s (ASN) 42nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in San Diego.