Acute kidney injury (AKI) and its attendant almost-seven-times-higher risk of death is common in US veterans hospitalized with COVID-19—especially black patients, an observational study published yesterday in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology suggests.A research team led by the VA Saint Louis Health Care System and Washington University analyzed data from 5,216 patients in Departments of Veterans Affairs Health Care System hospitals from March to July.
While previous studies have linked COVID-19 with AKI, this was the first known nationwide study in veterans.Of the 5,216 hospitalized veterans with COVID-19, 1,655 (32%) had AKI, of whom 58% had Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes stage 1 disease, 13% were in