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During the congress, E-Posters will be accessible to all participants on the congress website 24/7, as well as in the E-poster stations in the congress center.
Preparing your E-Poster
Please review the E-Poster format requirements carefully when preparing your E-Poster. Should your E-Poster not meet the mentioned requirements, it may not be displayed as described above.
E-Poster Submission Deadline
Please prepare and upload your E-Poster no later than March 14, 2026 11.59PM CET. After this date, you will no longer be able to prepare and upload your E-poster and it will not be displayed and accessible on the congress website.
Please follow the instructions below to input your abstract title.
Abstract titles should be brief and reflect the content of the abstract.
Chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) disproportionately affects men in agricultural communities. Since prevalence is higher among men than in women, extant data exploring risk factors have focused largely on men, reporting homogenous exposures among affected and unaffected men. With the hypothesis that studying women—considered outliers in CKDu—may help to parse exposures, we conducted a case-control study among women in two agricultural regions in Sri Lanka.
We conducted a case-control study using data from two prospective cohorts: the Kidney Protection Project (KiPP) and the Surveillance of Persons at Risk for Kidney Disease (SPARK). We identified 15 women cases from the Wilgamuwa Divisional Secretariat, a CKDu-endemic region, with eGFR 20–59 mL/min/1.73 m² at baseline who experienced a ≥30% decline or progression to <15 mL/min/1.73 m². We selected two age-matched control groups with normal eGFR: one from the same endemic region and another from Hasalaka, a neighboring non-endemic region. We conducted exploratory analyses of self-reported exposures, including occupational history, water use, and behavioral factors. We also used untargeted and targeted methods to analyze water samples for inorganic and organic chemicals.
Among 15 women with declining eGFR, mean age was 53 (SD 8) years, and mean eGFR 37 (SD 30) mL/min/1.73 m². 46% of cases, 40% of endemic but none of non-endemic area controls reported family history of kidney disease. Reverse osmosis (RO) water use was present exclusively in the endemic area. Self-reported glyphosate use and household field burning practices were rare across all groups, and there was minimal use of tobacco and alcohol. Women who reported heat exhaustion (OR=19.3; p=0.017) and pesticide handling (OR=12.6; p=0.011) were more likely cases. Women who used natural fertilizer in home garden were more likely controls (OR=0.05; p=0.008). Cases’ well water had similar or lower levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead, but had higher fluoride, sulfate, calcium, and vanadium (Figure 1), and more often contained pesticides at >1 ppb, particularly diazinon, compared with controls from endemic and non-endemic regions.
In this study of women from a CKDu-endemic region with CKD and progressive kidney function decline, we observed differences in self-reported heat exposure and pesticide handling, with home gardening emerging as a potential route of exposure. In addition, we detected more agrochemicals and a relatively higher concentrations of some trace elements in their household wells, supporting existing hypotheses around synergistic ground water-related exposures as potential contributors to CKDu.
