What is egfr african american

So you may need an eGFR test if you have any of the following symptoms:. There is very little risk to having a blood test. You may have slight pain or bruising at the spot where the needle was put in, but most symptoms go away quickly. You may need to fast not eat or drink or avoid certain foods for several hours before the test. Your health care provider will let you know if there are any special instructions to follow. A health care professional will take a blood sample from a vein in your arm, using a small needle.

After the needle is inserted, a small amount of blood will be collected into a test tube or vial. You may feel a little sting when the needle goes in or out. This usually takes less than five minutes. A GFR of 60 or higher is in the normal range. As higher values indicate better kidney function, there has been increasing recognition that this may lead to inequitable and delayed care.

Eneanya, one of the members of the task force, also discussed how she uses alternative diagnostic approaches with her patients, ones that meet the standards of transparency and shared decision making. Using serum creatine, factoring in age, height, weight, and gender, gives an estimate.

The landmark study that proposed the eGFR and included a coefficient for Black patients did so on the basis of 3 flawed, small, poor quality studies, Eneanya said, and these faulty assumptions were carried forward through later iterations. One looked at the body composition of roughly Black and White children and said that Black children had lower body fat and different body densities; the second looked at about 40 adults and said Blacks had higher total body potassium and calcium compared with Whites; and the third, looking at 60 healthy hospital workers, said that Blacks had higher on average serum creatinine kinase levels.

However, muscle mass on a living human cannot be measured, only on a cadaver, Eneanya noted; moreover, based on human genome studies, we know that there are no biological differences between races. Sociodemographic differences in clinical trial participation, rather than race, are a more likely factor in variation, and those factors could affect creatine levels, she said.

Possible explanations for differences in serum creatinine include muscle mass, excretion, ancestral, enzymatic, and transport processes, as well as diet, especially ones that include meat. This can help the eGFR score provide a more reliable indication of kidney functioning to guide diagnosis and treatment decisions. This is why they typically provide separate results for African American and non-African American people in their reports.

They proposed a new approach to estimating eGFR in September The task force also recommended using cystatin C to calculate eGFR. Cystatin C is a protein that the kidneys filter out of the blood. The NKF aims to keep assessing these equations to ensure that they are as accurate as possible. The following eGFR results indicate how well the kidneys are functioning:. The NKF states that African American people should be aware of their increased kidney disease risk and its risk factors, which include high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.

It recommends that African American people visit a doctor or clinic regularly, if possible, to check their blood sugar level , blood and urine pressure , and kidney function.

African American people can use the following sources to find culturally competent healthcare professionals. Black Health Matters provides a wide range of information about health and well-being tailored to African American people. Its website includes a list of recommended nephrologists for African American people.

The page also offers advice to help people find the right nephrologist for them. Black Doctors USA states that racial biases cause an increased risk of chronic conditions in Black and other marginalized communities.

The group aims to ensure that people in these communities have access to doctors who understand these biases. Black Doctors USA provides a service on its website for finding Black doctors, including kidney specialists, in the local area. CKD causes problems with how the kidneys function. This means that they cannot properly filter waste from the blood. Doctors use measures of GFR as indicators of kidney functioning. However, the procedure is difficult to administer, so they typically use eGFR instead.

To do this, they take a blood sample to measure the amount of creatinine in the blood and use an equation to calculate eGFR. However, updated equations now exclude race and ethnicity when calculating eGFR.