Nearly half of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) in the United States have undiagnosed chronic kidney disease (CKD), investigators reported at the National Kidney Foundation’s 2019 Spring Clinical Meetings in Boston.

Of 123,169 patients with DM-related CKD (DM-CKD) based on laboratory test results, 60,359 (49%) had no CKD diagnosis, according to George Bakris, MD, of University of Chicago Medicine, and colleagues. The West had the lowest rate of undiagnosed CKD (37.6%), whereas the Northeast had the highest (67%). The rates were 50.8% in the South and 55.8% in the North Central region.

Female patients had 41% higher odds of undiagnosed CKD than male patients. Compared with patients in the South, those in the Northeast and North Central regions had 97% and 22% higher odds of undiagnosed CKD, whereas patients in the West had 42% lower odds, the investigators reported in a poster presentation.


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“This information may help inform the identification of populations at risk for undiagnosed DM-CKD so that appropriate, guideline-based treatment and risk reduction efforts may be undertaken,” the authors concluded.

For the study, the investigators used data from the Optum Clinformatics database, which includes both commercial and Medicare Advantage health plan claims. The index date for CKD was the first serum creatinine measurement leading to an estimated glomerular filtration rate below 60 mL/min/1.73 m2.

Reference

Bakris G, Coresh J, Vassalotti J, et al. Prevalence and factors associated with undiagnosed chronic kidney disease in diabetes mellitus. Poster presented at the National Kidney Foundation’s 2019 Spring Clinical Meetings in Boston, May 8-12. Poster 308.