By Cynthia Flash
Special To The Medium
Dr. Bessie Young wants to know why African Americans and other minorities are so much more likely to get kidney disease than Caucasians. This kidney doctor has devoted much of her research at the Seattle Veterans Affairs health system and the University of Washington to answering this question – then finding a way to help educate at-risk populations on ways to avoid getting the disease.
Dr. Young has been interested in studying kidneys since she majored in chemistry at Pacific Lutheran University in the early 1980s. While some students showed a keen interest in beer or lawn Frisbee, she was drawn to electrolytes – chemicals such as sodium and chloride (salt), potassium, magnesium, and calcium that help control the fluid balance in our bodies. Kidneys work to process these chemicals from the food we eat. If our kidneys aren’t working properly, the fluid and chemicals in our bodies get out of balance.
As a student at the University of Washington medical school, Dr. Young’s interest grew and she decided to become a nephrologist, specializing in treating kidney disease. She went on to get her master’s degree in public health so that she could research not only the medical questions behind the disease, but questions related to populations and how cultural customs affect how a certain group responds to a disease.
As part of her work, Dr. Young helps educate the community that kidney disease can be slowed and prevented.
That’s especially important in minority communities. While one in 10 American adults has kidney disease, that number is four times as high in the African American community. In her research, Dr. Young has looked at individuals treated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Seattle to determine whether African Americans still have a higher incidence of kidney disease even if they had the same access to health care as the rest of the population.
She conducts her research in a clinical setting to rule out lack of health care as a contributing factor. Even in the clinical setting, where everyone had equal access to health care, minorities had higher rates of kidney disease and kidney failure that led to higher rates of dialysis, and amputations.
More recently, Dr. Young has been studying genetic diseases associated with kidney disease and kidney disease progression. Dr. Young was involved in a study that evaluated the association of sickle cell trait with development of chronic kidney disease and found that those with the trait were twice as likely to develop chronic kidney disease compared to those who did not have sickle cell trait.
“Up to now, we have always thought that sickle cell trait was benign and was not associated with kidney disease,” Young said. “This study showed that those who have sickle cell trait have a greater risk of developing kidney disease than those who don’t.”
Now Dr. Young, a former medical director at Northwest Kidney Centers, is studying the progression for people who have early kidney disease. These studies are measuring different factors to see who will decline to kidney failure. Dr. Young is also looking at other genetic risk factors that might be associated with kidney disease, including determining if people want to be tested for a new genetic trait and if so, how would they want to receive the information.
She is also working to increase dialysis patients’ knowledge about kidney transplants. Fewer minority patients have opted to be on the kidney transplant list and fewer receive transplants. Young has conducted interviews to determine the reasons why some patients aren’t interested in transplants. She is using grant money to try to increase awareness about the benefits of transplants from living donors because those transplants have a higher success rate than transplants from cadavers. She has developed materials to help educate the community about transplant and dialysis choices so that more individuals will try to receive a transplant – and get off of dialysis, which has a high mortality rate in the first year.
“There should be a push to get people transplanted and transplanted early,” she said.
Videos and additional materials about dialysis choices can be found online at https://www.youtube.com/user/IKANKidney.
Prevention of kidney disease is the best option, however. Young encourages everyone to get tested for kidney disease and to learn about living a healthy lifestyle. She acknowledges that some may not want to get tested for fear they may learn they have the disease.
“But if people know they have early disease, there are things they can to do prevent it from getting worse. People should get tested, especially if you have risk factors, including family history, diabetes, hypertension and foam in the urine,” she said.
For more information about kidney disease and prevention, visit Northwest Kidney Centers online at www.nwkidney.org. Founded in Seattle in 1962, nonprofit Northwest Kidney Centers is one of the 10 largest dialysis providers in the United States.
