Effect of alcohol consumption on kidney function: population-based cohort study PMC

Gonwa and Wilkinson (1996) reported a 4-year survival rate of 60 percent in hepatorenal syndrome patients who received a liver transplant, which constitutes a major step forward, considering the previous uniformly fatal course of the disease. Most of the metabolic reactions essential to life are highly sensitive to the acidity (i.e., hydrogen ion how does alcohol affect the kidneys concentration) of the surrounding fluid. The kidneys play an important role in regulating acidity, thereby helping determine the rate at which metabolic reactions proceed. Alcohol can hamper the regulation of acidity, thus affecting the body’s metabolic balance. The risk and extent of kidney damage will only increase as alcohol use continues.

Can drinking alcohol cause kidney failure?

When you begin to experience kidney related symptoms that result from drinking, you should immediately consult a doctor. The kidneys are vital organs and it’s extremely important to maintain them at optimal functioning. One of the first signs that alcohol is impacting your kidneys is pain and tenderness around the kidneys. The damage alcohol does to the kidneys can cause a series of symptoms throughout the body. It can drain your accounts, ruin your relationships, destroy your career, and cost you your family. While these discussions usually revolve around the liver, which is important, it’s also vital to know how the kidneys are impacted by alcohol use.

Limitations of Existing Studies

In the absence of ADH, when body fluids are overly dilute, the kidneys dilute the urine, allowing more water to leave the body. “Normal” urine flow rate is 1 milliliter per minute (i.e., approximately 1 to 1.5 L/day), but this rate can vary widely, depending on water intake or dehydration level, for instance. The American Cancer Society suggests that no one should drink alcohol due to its harmful effects on the body and its potential to increase your risk of cancer.

Special Benefits and Confounding Factors of Alcohol Consumption

A recent meta-analysis (Cheungpasitporn et al. 2015) found little support for such a relationship. One form of alcohol abuse that contributes to kidney disease is binge drinking, usually defined as consuming four or five drinks within two hours. Binge drinking causes a person’s blood alcohol content to rise to dangerous levels, which in turn causes the kidneys to lose their function so much, the term for this is acute kidney injury.

Data availability

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a substantial public health problem, affecting 15.7 million people age 12 and older in the United States (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality 2016). In 2012, 5.9 percent of all global deaths were attributable to alcohol—7.6 percent for men and 4.0 percent for women. Moreover, alcohol-attributable deaths have increased worldwide, making alcohol the fifth leading risk factor for premature death and disability in 2010 and the first among people ages 15 to 49 (World Health Organization 2014).

Hilden and Svendsen (1975) observed hyponatremia in five patients who drank at least 5 liters of beer per day (L/d) without any other nourishment. The kidneys continuously perform their tasks of purifying and balancing the constituents of the body’s fluids. Although resilient, the kidneys can deteriorate as a result of malnutrition, alcohol abuse or dependence, or liver and other diseases.

In older people, ADH levels sharply increase following alcohol intake, perhaps in part because sensitivity to increased electrolyte concentration is enhanced with age. It is not known whether chronic alcoholic patients experience a similar difference in the ADH response as they age, however. Another study with dogs (Beard et al. 1965) disclosed that the effects of chronic alcohol consumption endured even longer. The investigators noted increased plasma and extracellular fluid volume 1 week after chronic alcohol ingestion, and these volume expansions persisted for the remaining 7 weeks of the study.

• Heavy drinking makes it more difficult for you to qualify for a kidney transplant.
• For men, heavy alcohol use is defined as more than four drinks in a single sitting or more than 14 drinks in a week.
• Alcohol increases your risk of developing diabetes and can make it more difficult to manage diabetes if you do have it.
• As a result, excess carbon dioxide accumulates, and the body’s acid level subsequently increases.
• Alcohol can hamper the regulation of acidity, thus affecting the body’s metabolic balance.
• In the absence of ADH, segments of the kidney’s tubule system become impermeable to water, thus preventing it from being reabsorbed into the body.

What does kidney pain from alcohol feel like?

• Points and bars represent beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals, respectively.
• Among the most important substances contributing to these conditions are water, sodium, potassium, calcium, and phosphate.
• As known, alcohol tolerance varies greatly from person to person, and some nations consume more alcohol than others.
• Alcohol can impact these functions, as drinking affects your kidneys in many ways.
• If you’ve already been diagnosed with cancer, drinking alcohol could also affect your risk of developing a new cancer.
• Rather than the type of beverage, it is the amount of alcohol that affects the kidneys, with binge or excessive drinking having the most impact.
• The current study enrolled 45,200 subjects, which was a representative cohort for the Taiwan population.

This may result from high levels of toxins leading to tissue injury and inflammation. NO is a free gaseous signal molecule produced by the NOS family, including neuronal NO synthase (nNOS), inducible NO synthase (iNOS), and endothelial NO synthase (eNOS), and it plays an important role in hemodynamics regulation. In general, NO is generated by mesangial cells and renal tubular epithelial cells, and it plays an important role in the regulation of glomerular and medullar hemodynamics and renin release. Although different studies have shown opposite results for the effects of NO and NOS activity with alcohol consumption [19,39,46,47], they came to a similar conclusion that NO and NOS play important roles in glomerular endothelial cell injury. In addition, long-term alcohol consumption decreases prostaglandin E2 in the kidney, which can release anti-inflammatory cytokines and dilate the afferent arteriole to increase glomerular blood flow, which causes kidney dysfunction and glomerular destruction [24]. Alcohol causes changes in the function of the kidneys and makes them less able to filter the blood.

How Can Kidney Disease Be Prevented?

In most studies, proteinuria was detected by a single measurement using a dipstick test. Although studies have proven that even a single dipstick indication of proteinuria is a significant risk for CKD and ESRD [122], a single dipstick detection can be biased by numerous confounders. In other studies, the researchers used serum creatinine or eGFR to ascertain the kidney function of patients; however, they are not ideal in many drinkers, especially in those with extremely low or high muscle mass due to chronic alcoholism [123]. First, many studies are based on patients’ routine health checkups, as annual health examinations do not allow researchers to evaluate any fluctuation in serum creatinine and other biomarkers.

For example, in an early study on dogs (Chaikoff et al. 1948), investigators observed several striking alterations after chronic alcohol administration. The basement membrane of the glomerulus (see sidebar figure) became abnormally thickened and was characterized by cell proliferation. In another study, Van Thiel and colleagues (1977) compared kidney structure and function in alcohol-fed and control rats.