Researchers from Paraguay and Belgium documented the first case in the country, and possibly in South America, of a chronic kidney disease that affects young farmers exposed to high temperatures and insecticides or pesticides, which has already been found in parts of Central America, Sri Lanka and from India.
Source: EFE
The study on a patient with chronic interstitial nephritis of agricultural communities (CINAC, in English) It is the result of collaboration between experts from the private Catholic University of Our Lady of the Assumption and the University of Antwerp.
the resulto It was published in March of last year by the specialized magazine Kidney International Reports (KI reports).
The patient, according to the publication, is a 56-year-old farmer residing in the town of Itacurubí del Rosario, in the department of San Pedro, who since he was 18 years old has worked fumigating cotton and corn plantations, with temperatures that fluctuate in summer between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius and in winter between 20 and 24 degrees.
Researcher Walter Cabrera, one of the authors of the article, explained to EFE that This person came to the office in the company of a sister and with the appearance of being healthy. However, they found that he had kidney failure.
“He told – he added – that he was dedicated to fumigation, that he put the fumigator on his back, that he went to fumigate and that he did not have protective equipment.”
This man “clinically met the requirements” of cases that had been described in Central America, according to the expert.
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It was for this reason that After detecting that the subject’s kidney function corresponded to that of a patient with kidney disease, they proposed submitting him to a biopsy. The study, taken by puncture and analyzed both at the University of Antwerp and at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California (USA), confirmed the presence of CINAC.
For Cabrera, This case is just the beginning of a series of studies that they hope to develop in the coming months and even years on this disease. whose causes are still unknown.
The research is the result of collaboration between experts from the private Catholic University of Our Lady of the Assumption and the University of Antwerp.
“We can reduce a significant percentage of the dialysis population by carrying out good prevention campaigns,” he anticipated about the possible repercussions of these findings.
He pointed out, for example, that among the patients undergoing dialysis there have been farmers whose kidney disease was classified as “of unknown origin.”
“Now we realize that we are probably facing a huge population of people with CINAC,” he said.
The author of the article, Francisco Santa-Cruz, affirmed that until now ,”in all countries of the world, chronic kidney disease is explained by diabetes”, by vascular diseases such as hypertension or the sum of the two.
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“Here is a guest that had not been foreseen before, which is CINAC, and it is not only a small-time guest, but a strong guest that is even competing with diabetes,” Cabrera added, stating that if this fact were verified, it would have “a ferocious repercussion”.
The Paraguayan researchers have started contacts with their colleagues from the National University of the Northeast of Argentina and others from Brazil. Also, they are preparing to expand the lines of work, with the analysis of the water sources of the communities or to determine the possible presence of the disease in children.
This study “can change the history of kidney failure in Paraguay,” stressed the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Catholic University Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, María Magdalena Mayor.
