MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Anthony Bleyer, Jr.
Wake Forest University Class of 2015, Economics
President, Club Sports Union
Senior Captain, Wake Forest Men's Ultimate
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: There are over 100,000 individuals waiting for a kidney transplant, but each year only approximately 6,000 individuals have living donors who donate them a kidney; the rest of the individuals must remain on dialysis until they receive a kidney from an individual who has died and is a kidney donor. A major limiting factor for kidney donation is that many individuals are not healthy enough to donate a kidney because they have excessive obesity, diabetes mellitus, blood pressure that is too high, or they have other health conditions. While it was known that obesity, hypertension, and other health conditions are contraindications to kidney transplant, there was no data about what percentage of the US population would be able to donate a kidney. To study this, we (a team of kidney doctors and researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC) analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey. This study is a population-based sample that is representative of the US population.
Based on data from this study, we determined that 55.2% of the U.S. population would not have met eligibility criteria for
kidney donation, often due to preventable health conditions. 19.2% of the population would have been unable to donate due to hypertension, 15% due to obesity, 11.6% due to excessive alcohol intake, and 11.5% due to diabetes. 60.1% of individuals with an adjusted family household income (AFHI) <$35,000 did not meet eligibility criteria vs. 49.3% for an AFHI > $100,000. If one considers non-US citizenship and a family income below the poverty threshold as exclusion criteria, 68.5% of the US population would be unable to donate.
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