Chronic kidney disease is a key risk factor for severe COVID-19: A call to action by the ERA-edta

Diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease have been listed as risk factors for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since the first report of the disease in January 2020. However, this report did not mention chronic kidney disease (CKD) nor did it provide information on the relevance of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) or albuminuria. As the disease spread across the globe, information on larger populations with greater granularity on risk factors emerged. The recently published OpenSAFELY project analysed factors associated with COVID-19 death in 17 million patients. The picture that arose differs significantly from initial reports. For example, hypertension is not an independent risk factor for COVID-19 death [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 0.89], but renal disease very much is. Dialysis (aHR 3.69), organ transplantation (aHR 3.53) and CKD (aHR 2.52 for patients with eGFR