A developed by Canadian researchers can help predict a person’s risk of developing chronic kidney disease.
The tool was developed by a team at The Ottawa Hospital to help people understand their risk factors and raise awareness as the number of .
Nearly , which do not show symptoms until it's extremely severe, the Kidney Foundation of Canada states.
The registered charity says a person can lose more than appear.
"We wanted to create a tool that can help people understand their risk, understand things that they can modify in their lifestyle that might help reduce the risk and to teach in general about chronic kidney disease," Dr. Manish Sood, a kidney specialist who co-led the development of the online calculator, told CTVNews.ca in an interview on Thursday.
Kidneys balance the electrolyte composition in bodies, and also control blood pressure and secrete and erythropoietin, , Sood said.
"Maybe most importantly, they perform an overall cleaning filtration function on our blood where they remove literally thousands of things," he said.
A number of factors can put people at risk of developing chronic kidney disease but the most common, Sood said, are high blood pressure and diabetes.
Sood, along with Dr. Ariana Noel, led the team that created the online calculator, which asks users questions about their lifestyle and habits. Using data from ICES, an independent Ontario health statistics non-profit, the team was able to determine how different factors add to a person's risk.
"We looked at data from 22,000 Canadians who completed something called the Canadian Community Health Survey," Sood said. "They (were) asked a whole bunch of factors about their life, diet, lifestyle. Then we were able to connect that data to their kidney function, and then mathematically, you can create models that tell you if you have these risk factors."
The calculator is a part of creating simple risk quizzes for people to understand their health. Some of the calculators show risk factors for life expectancy, dementia and cardiovascular health.
Sood said his team created the tool for people to improve their understanding of their health, not make them anxious.
"We want to let people be informed...I feel personally, that's empowering," Sood said. "We want to know information as patients."
The kidney quiz launched last week takes. It asks people about how much alcohol they drink, how active they are and their basic medical history. by the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the Ontario Regional Centre of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, and is supported by ICES.
Sood said the calculator took a few years to put together. He said the team took "an extra step" and tested the equation with a completely different population to ensure it could predict accurately whether someone is at risk of developing kidney disease. To do this, they tested the tool on people in the United Kingdom, which added more time to the overall project.
"It is quite accurate in predicting whether people will develop kidney disease, but people will then need a confirmatory test," Sood said. "So if you're at high risk, or if you're worried that you have developed it already…This is just kind of a preliminary screener to give you an idea."
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