For thinny patients on dialysis, is dangerously

Dialysis patients with low body fat are at increased risk of death, even in comparison with patients at the highest level of body fat percentage, according to a study at the American Society of Nephrology 42nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exhibition presented in San Diego. May "Our study shows that body fat plays a protective role in patients on dialysis," said Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, Ph.D. (LABioMed at Harbor-UCLA). "The results in the increasing number of reports on the" obesity paradox "or" reverse epidemiology "in patients with chronic kidney disease and other chronic diseases." The research will be presented by Youngmee Kim, RN.

Nephrologists have explained confused about the "obesity paradox" in dialysis patients Kalantar-Zadeh. Contrary to intuition, a body mass index is associated with longer survival in patients undergoing hemodialysis. We hypothesized that very low fat body is less than ten per cent is a powerful predictor of mortality.

Interacting near-infrared technology, researchers measured the percentage of body fat in 671 dialysis patients from eight dialysis centers in California. Then, the five-year mortality among patients from different levels of body fat.

Mortality was higher among dialysis patients with less than 10 percent body fat-2, 5 to 3 times higher than for those with fat body 20 to 30 per cent. The increased risk of death in patients with body fat remained very low after adjusting for age, sex, race, other diseases, and laboratory findings important.

Further analysis with continuous levels of body fat (instead of categories) a direct linear relationship between body fat and risk of mortality: "The highest percentage of body fat, the greater the chances of survival confirmed" said Kalantar-Zadeh. Although more research is needed, the results suggest that the obesity paradox can be explained by an increased risk of death in patients with very low fat body compared to those who have average or very high percentage of body fat.

The observational study has the same limitations as other epidemiological studies, Kalantar-Zadeh recalls. "We also believe that the body fat by measuring the subcutaneous fat of the upper arm, which differ from the May intra-abdominal fat.