This can be due to alcohol causing an autoimmune reaction that causes this inflammation. Alcohol can also suppress your immune system, increasing the risk of glomerulonephritis. In addition to causing dehydration, alcohol increases blood pressure by causing blood how does alcohol affect kidneys vessels to constrict. They respond to high blood pressure by removing fluid from the blood, which decreases its volume and the pressure it causes.
- Unfortunately, alcohol has the potential to interfere with each of these functions.
- High blood pressure is an important risk factor for developing kidney disease.
- This 13-year cohort study revealed that participants with social or regular drinking habits had significantly reduced risk of the development of CKD when compared with non-drinkers.
- In order to understand the effects of alcohol on kidney health, you need to understand what purpose kidneys serve.
- These hormones help stimulate red blood cell growth and regulate blood pressure.
- Permanent damage to your kidneys happens with regular heavy drinking over time.
- The risk and extent of kidney damage will only increase as alcohol use continues.
Influence of sex, age, primary diseases and other confounding factors
Notably, these mechanisms have not yet been validated experimentally in the kidney. Additional research is needed to clarify if alcohol does indeed promote kidney injury and the mechanisms by which alcohol-induced kidney injury may occur. Long-term, heavy alcohol use can lead to acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, and kidney failure. Moderate alcohol use may have no relation to kidney disease, but you should limit alcohol intake to protect your kidneys and overall health.
Diabetes and Kidney Complications
In his role, Dr. Marcus provides strategic direction and oversees the implementation of what is alcoholism clinical initiatives that drive value for patients, providers, and the broader healthcare system. One of the many roles the kidneys have in the body is maintaining fluid balance. While alcohol is a liquid, it is also a diuretic, which causes the body to remove fluids at an increased rate, causing dehydration.
Influence of alcoholism on the prognosis of patients with CKD
This increases the strain placed on the kidneys as they have to compensate for the damaged liver. The rate of blood flow to the kidneys and glomerular filtration rate are regulated in healthy kidneys. Although light-to-moderate alcohol consumption may not pose a risk to patients with CKD, the patients’ condition needs to be considered. Many patients with CKD often have other comorbidities, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and other serious chronic diseases. For these patients, drinking alcohol may further increase their risk of death. In addition, alcohol consumption can contribute to volume overload, hypertension, and electrolyte disorder between hemodialysis sessions in hemodialysis patients, which also should not be ignored.
- High blood sugar levels can damage the vessels in the kidneys, which inhibits their ability to filter waste properly.
- Chronic kidney damage is often progressive, requiring dialysis every one to three days to remove toxins that build up in your body and keep you alive.
- This happens when the kidneys lose the ability to properly filter blood and maintain proper fluid and electrolyte balance (7).
- Dr. Marcus currently resides in Wallingford, Pennsylvania with his wife.
- Diagnostic tests for liver disease usually include blood work to check for elevated liver enzymes, low protein levels and other indications of liver issues.
- This test is non-invasive, quick and gives an approximate estimate as to how much liver damage someone may have.
Free radicals (also called reactive oxygen species ROS) are one of the by-products of alcohol metabolism and are known to cause cellular damage, unless the body can use antioxidants to clean them up. Oxidative stress occurs when the body cannot detoxify free radicals as fast as they are being produced, and it is pivotal in triggering alcohol-related tissue injury. Studies suggest that several mechanisms produce ROS in alcohol-damaged organs, including the liver (Cederbaum et al. 2009), heart (Tan et al. 2012; Varga et al. 2015), and kidney (Latchoumycandane et al. 2015). CYP2E1 is of particular interest when thinking about potential mechanisms for alcohol-related kidney damage. The body mainly metabolizes alcohol using the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which is expressed primarily in the liver.
- Finally, patients may not clear toxins from the liver very well, and these toxins build up and affect brain function, leading to confusion and other cognitive changes.
- It creates essential proteins and produces a fluid called bile that helps digest fats.
- Although the researchers do not analyze the reasons why people are lost to follow-up, we cannot ignore the possibility that some patients were diagnosed with CKD and had begun regular medical treatment in another medical center.
- There are no specific studies suggesting that certain types of alcohol are worse on the kidneys than others.
Your kidney health is unique. Your path should be too.
You might wonder if you can continue to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or your favorite craft IPA. The answer will depend on a few things, including your current health. People with alcohol-induced CKD will require treatment for AUD as well as CKD. Sometimes, AKI can resolve over time if a person makes sure to stay hydrated.
Assessment of alcohol consumption
Besides that, adopting a healthy lifestyle like staying hydrated, eating a balanced diet, and exercising regularly can help support overall kidney function. The association of baseline alcohol consumption and decline in kidney function over 12 years among 5729 participants. Points and bars represent beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals, respectively.
Red wine and kidney disease: What you should know
However, during chronic ethanol consumption, the body also uses CYP2E1 in the liver as well as the kidneys. Interestingly, studies find that CYP2E1 induction is much more robust in the kidneys compared with the liver (Roberts et al. 1994; Zerilli et al. 1995). This massive induction of CYP2E1 in the kidneys results in oxidative stress that modifies phospholipids in cell membranes.
Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy: Another Potential Confounder
There are mixed conclusions about whether or not alcohol causes kidney failure specifically. Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe for you to drink, especially if you have a medical condition or take medicines that might be affected by using alcohol. Women, older people, and those with smaller bodies should be especially careful. Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes are a leading cause of chronic kidney issues. High blood sugar levels can damage the vessels in the kidneys, which inhibits their ability to filter waste properly.
In contrast, some studies find that heavy alcohol consumption may predict poorer outcome in patients with chronic kidney diseases (Kronborg et al. 2008; Shankar et al. 2006; White et al. 2009). For example, White and colleagues (2009) reported that heavier drinkers (those consuming more than 30 g of alcohol/week) were at higher risk of incident albuminuria, which is typically a symptom of kidney disease. Japanese (Yamagata et al. 2007) and Italian (Buja et al. 2011) cohort studies revealed a U-shaped association between alcohol consumption and incidence of proteinuria. It is possible that the contradictory findings are the result of varying effects of different types of alcoholic beverages on the kidney, or the result of different alcohol consumption patterns in different countries. Age, primary diseases, initial eGFR, and individual differences can also affect the prognosis of patients with CKD and interfere with the effects of alcohol on the kidneys 7,10,67,94.