Introduction:
Kidney failure (KF) is one of the risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and vice versa. COVID-19 increases mortality from KF and CVD. However, the correlation between death from KF and from CVD during the COVID-19 pandemic among different U.S. racial and ethnic groups is unknown. We aim to examine the correlation between mortality from KF (acute and chronic kidney diseases) and CVD (primarily ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and cerebrovascular accident) before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic among different racial and ethnic U.S. populations.
Methods:
A database query from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder was retrieved. Yearly age-adjusted mortality from KF between 2015 and 2024 was correlated with the mortality from CVD during the same study period by Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Further analyses were performed using stratified data before and after 2019 and among Hispanic Black, Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White.
Results:
Age-adjusted mortality from KF trended down before the COVID-19 pandemic (from 51.51 to 49.58 deaths per 100,000 populations) but trended up during the first two years of the pandemic (from 58.82 to 69.75 deaths per 100,000 populations). However, age-adjusted mortality from CVD was stable (between 313.19 and 316.50 deaths per 100,000 populations during pre-pandemic) and then trended down from 381.19 to 356.19 deaths per 100,000 populations during the first two years of the pandemic). Those overall cause-specific mortalities are highly correlated with a correlation coefficient of 0.9267. Age-adjusted mortality from KF was stable before the COVID-19 pandemic and then trended up during the first three years of the pandemic before trending down. Non-Hispanic Black had the highest mortality rate from KF followed by non-Hispanic White, Hispanic White, and Hispanic Black. Age-adjusted mortality from CVD had generally trended up from pre through COVID-19 pandemic and then declined since 2013. Similar to KF, the mortality rate of CVD was the highest in non-Hispanic Black followed by non-Hispanic White, Hispanic White, and Hispanic Black. While the correlation between mortality rate from KF and CVD was negative among non-Hispanic Black before the pandemic with a correlation coefficient of -0.9467, it became positively correlated during the pandemic (0.9731). The change in the direction of the correlation occurred in non-Hispanic White (-0.9264 vs. 0.9587). For the Hispanic group, the correlation was positive and increased during the pandemic in both Black (0.2765 vs. 0.7816) and White (0.7270 vs. 0.9660).
Conclusions:
Mortality of both KF and CVD increased during the COVID-19 pandemic; while the KF mortality rate trended to decline toward the pre-pandemic. The inverse correlation between the mortality from KF and CVD pre-pandemic that became highly and positively correlated among non-Hispanic Black during the pandemic may suggest factors contributing to both KF and CVD mortalities. Non-Hispanic Black who have the highest mortality from both KF and CVD should be focused to mitigate racial and ethnic health disparity.
I have no potential conflict of interest to disclose.
I did not use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.