Heat and Acute Kidney Injury

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a sudden decrease of kidney function that is almost always reversible. While reversible, AKI is serious and often requires hospitalization. Although AKI can arise within already-hospitalized patients (“hospital-acquired AKI”), an unknown proportion of AKI initiates outside of the hospital (“community-acquired AKI”). One potential contributor to the incidence of community-acquired AKI is exposure to high ambient temperatures, which is thought to impact kidneys largely through volume depletion. Motivated by increasing concerns about climate change, population-level studies using administrative health data have consistently reported positive associations between outdoor heat (high temperatures and heat waves) and emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations for AKI. A key limitation of existing studies is the identification of AKI cases through International Classification of Disease (ICD) discharge diagnosis coding. Code-classified AKI, while specific, is not a sensitive marker of AKI; it misses a high percentage of total cases. Moreover, it does not distinguish community-acquired from hospital-acquired AKI, cannot assess AKI severity, and does not provide information on patient context. In addition to these limitations, the majority of population-level studies have relied on spatially crude measures of temperature (e.g., from one or a few monitoring sites) that do not fully capture important urban heat dynamics.

In this study, we analyze a highly detailed clinical database of over 1.5 million electronic medical records in Atlanta, Georgia for 2013-2021 linked to a high-resolution, state-of-the-art exposure product that is being developed as part of this project. For ascertainment of AKI cases, we will consider ICD diagnosis codes – reflecting what has been used in the heat-AKI literature – as well as via assessment of a KDIGO (Kidney Disease Improving Global Initiative)-based serum creatine (SCr) definition comparing ED ‘first-measured’ SCr to baseline values. The KDIGO definition will enable a specific assessment of community-acquired AKI and severity (i.e., stage). Our aims include (1) development of a rich database of ED visits, heat exposure metrics at patient residential address, and individual- and area-level sociodemographic and health risk factors, (2) estimation of associations of short-term outdoor heat exposure and AKI, and (3) identification of individual- and area-level risk factors that increase vulnerability to outdoor heat-related AKI. This work will fill major gaps in the epidemiology of outdoor heat and AKI that will ultimately support targeted outreach and education activities, guide improvements in clinical care, and provide inputs for quantitative risk assessment and economic evaluation of heat-health impacts.

Study Locations: Atlanta, GA

Investigators: Stefanie Ebelt (PI), Noah Scovronick, and Howard Chang

Current or Recent Funding Sources: National Institutes of Health (R01DK133650)

Previous Funding Sources: National Institutes of Health (R21ES023763)

Category: Climate and Health