New online calculator can help Canadians predict their risk of developing kidney disease

A new online calculator developed by Canadian researchers can help predict a person’s risk of developing chronic kidney disease.

The tool was developed by a team at The Ottawa Hospital to help people understand their risk factors and raise awareness as the number of people living with end-stage kidney disease continues to increase.

Nearly one in 10 Canadians have a type of kidney disease, which do not show symptoms until it's extremely severe, the Kidney Foundation of Canada states.

The registered charity says a person can lose more than 50 per cent of their kidney function before symptoms appear.

"We wanted to create a tool that can help people understand their risk, understand things that they can modify in their lifestyle that might help reduce the risk and to teach in general about chronic kidney disease," Dr. Manish Sood, a kidney specialist who co-led the development of the online calculator, told CTVNews.ca in an interview on Thursday.

Kidneys balance the electrolyte composition in bodies, and also control blood pressure and secrete vitamin D and erythropoietin, types of hormones, Sood said.

"Maybe most importantly, they perform an overall cleaning filtration function on our blood where they remove literally thousands of things," he said.

A number of factors can put people at risk of developing chronic kidney disease but the most common, Sood said, are high blood pressure and diabetes.

Sood, along with Dr. Ariana Noel, led the team that created the online calculator, which asks users questions about their lifestyle and habits. Using data from ICES, an independent Ontario health statistics non-profit, the team was able to determine how different factors add to a person's risk.

"We looked at data from 22,000 Canadians who completed something called the Canadian Community Health Survey," Sood said. "They (were) asked a whole bunch of factors about their life, diet, lifestyle. Then we were able to connect that data to their kidney function, and then mathematically, you can create models that tell you if you have these risk factors."

The calculator is a part of Project Big Life, a group of Canadian researchers, clinicians and data scientists creating simple risk quizzes for people to understand their health. Some of the calculators show risk factors for life expectancy, dementia and cardiovascular health.

Sood said his team created the tool for people to improve their understanding of their health, not make them anxious.

"We want to let people be informed...I feel personally, that's empowering," Sood said. "We want to know information as patients."

The kidney quiz launched last week takes three to five minutes to fill out. It asks people about how much alcohol they drink, how active they are and their basic medical history. The project was funded by the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the Ontario Regional Centre of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, and is supported by ICES.

Sood said the calculator took a few years to put together. He said the team took "an extra step" and tested the equation with a completely different population to ensure it could predict accurately whether someone is at risk of developing kidney disease. To do this, they tested the tool on people in the United Kingdom, which added more time to the overall project.

"It is quite accurate in predicting whether people will develop kidney disease, but people will then need a confirmatory test," Sood said. "So if you're at high risk, or if you're worried that you have developed it already…This is just kind of a preliminary screener to give you an idea."