Kidney health may be affected by certain beverages, but thus far study results have been mixed, to provide more clarity researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health prospectively studied 3003 African-American participants with normal kidney function who were enrolled in the Jackson Heart Study.
Lack of comprehensive information is a problem in regards to health implications of the wide range of beverage options available, specifically there is limited information on which types of beverages and patterns of beverages are associated with the risk of kidney disease.
Beverage intake of each of the 3003 subjects was assessed through a food frequency questionnaire administered at the beginning of 2000-04. Subjects were followed until 2009-13: 6% of the subjects developed CKD over a median follow up of 8 years; after adjusting for confounding factors consuming a beverage pattern consisting of soda/pop, sweetened fruit drinks, and water was associated with a higher risk of developing CKD; those in the top tertile for consumption of this beverage pattern were found to be 61% more likely to develop CKD.
The team was shocked to see that water was a component of this beverage pattern linked to higher risk of CKD and noted that the study subjects reported consumption of a wide variety of types of water which included flavored and sweetened water, information was not collected about specific brands or types of bottled water in the study.
These findings hold strong with public health implications, a few cities have successfully reduced SSB consumption via taxation, while all other municipalities have resisted public health efforts to lower SSB consumption, in a cultural resistance that can be compared to that of the cultural resistance to smoking cessation after the Surgeon General report was released explains Holly Kramer MD, MPH and David Shoham, PhD.
