Kidney damage seen in one-third of COVID-19 patients studied in new report

More than a third of patients treated for coronavirus infections in New York’s largest hospital system showed signs of serious kidney damage, according to a new study.

Reuters reported that the study from a team at Northwell Health, the state’s largest health care provider, found that 36.6 percent of all patients treated in the hospital system for COVID-19 showed signs of “acute kidney injury,” resulting in 14.3 percent of that segment of patients requiring dialysis treatments.

“We found in the first 5,449 patients admitted, 36.6 percent developed acute kidney injury,” the study’s co-author, Dr. Kenar Jhaveri, told Reuters.

Jhaveri cautioned that the study does not suggest that COVID-19 specifically targets the kidneys; rather, she said, the high rate of kidney injuries is a sign of the seriousness of a patient’s condition.

“It’s not specific to COVID-19. It’s more related to how sick you are,” she said.

Kidney failure in COVID-19 patients appears to be related to the speed of the disease, the study continued: 37.3 percent of patients with coronavirus-related kidney injuries developed such injuries either before arriving at the hospital or within the first 24 hours of treatment.

New York state has confirmed more than 338,000 cases of the coronavirus, the most of any state in the U.S. More than 21,000 deaths have been reported across the state related to the disease.