A Mysterious Kidney Disease Has Arrived in Texas

(texasmonthly.com)

39 points | by johntfella 2 hours ago ago

30 comments

  • anenefan an hour ago ago

    I wasn't able to beat the bot wall, but I assume story close to [1] The thing of it is I'm aware of something very much the same - heat related kidney damage - something when I got a casual job with construction back in 2005, within the first couple of weeks I was warned rather pointedly by another worker who'd spent most of his working life around concreting and construction, of the dangers of long hours spend slouched over working on the concrete slabs. He had known many who'd got very ill despite following good hydration protocols [2], and knew working in the heat out on the slab came with this real risk. I being a new chum was dressed in heavy full length clothing, he generally wore cooler clothing - light shorts and short sleeved shirt which wasn't protocol for the job.

    [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davereddick_mysterious-kidney...

    [2] Most labouring job sites I've been at in the 00s at least always had a very prominent chart regarding urine colour and the dangers of dehydration, and heat stroke. As such most workers at various sites I've worked at being much more aware of urine colour regarding dehydration than most of the medical staff I encountered at the hospital my Mum died in.

    Edit: Forgot to mention my locale is North Queensland Australia - it gets fairly hot though summers.

    • wlesieutre an hour ago ago

      Can’t help that the state government is actively undermining local protections for workers dealing with heat dangers

      https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/16/texas-heat-wave-wate...

    • paulcole an hour ago ago

      > I wasn't able to beat the bot wall

      Most people have access to at least one 16-digit code that will do the trick.

      • anenefan an hour ago ago

        Well what that 16 digit code might be I am unaware. I used to be able to unpick java based stuff to bypass walls but these days I really just don't try too hard, typically a site these days isn't a single site but uses other external services - I have many such services denied for scraping PII needlessly.

        I could try a different browser - but in the time I wait for the site to decide if I'm not a bot, if I'm that invested, I've already done a quick search of topic heading and ...

  • sleepyguy 24 minutes ago ago

    Most of the roofers today in Texas are pretty damn young (16 - 30 tops). You don't really make it past that age because you're already worn out.

    The crew (10 guys) that showed up to roof my house went through at least 5 cases of Gatorade, I have a fridge in the garage that I filled with drinks. I told them to help themselves after seeing them pull a hot bottle of water from one of the trucks. These guys didn't even have a cooler with cold water.

    I suppose at some point water/hydration isn't good enough, they need salt and electrolytes to balance things out. They think wearing long pants and shirts acts as an insulator from the heat but in my opinion it's nuts, they need to cover up but, in the lightest possible clothing they can wear that breaths. The same goes for the landscapers who work outside all day. It wouldn't surprise me if they are dying from the heat, it is merciless here in the summer. Even the birds fly away....

  • ggm 2 hours ago ago

    A disease which targets latinx? seems more likely its field workers, inadequate hydration and bad fluid hygene overall.

    Could be culturally diet influenced as well.

    My urologist after I had my first oxalate kidney stone said "you can drink a litre of water a day, or you can pay for my yacht upgrade. It's your choice" -but the main thing was to limit oxalate rich foods or take adequate citric acid alongside/soon after. Obv there are many kinds of kidney disease aside from stones, but the commonality here about 'use it or lose it' with heat, fluids, work strikes me.

    • tptacek 2 hours ago ago

      Hard to imagine a diet of cultural significance that would put people into lifelong dialysis, at an epidemic scale.

      • riffraff 29 minutes ago ago

        Well there's cases of diets which came to prominence and caused issues,.from the obesity epidemic of modern west to the pellagra-riddled European countries consuming maize.

        It is conceivable that social/natural changes might bring to dietary changes whose damage at scale is only visible on hindsight.

      • nine_k an hour ago ago

        A diet that makes a particular infection easier to take root is very imaginable.

        • bawolff an hour ago ago

          sure, but not if we are just suddenly seeing it now. Most cultural based diets have a long history.

    • phyzome an hour ago ago

      For your explanation to be correct, you'd have to explain why this doesn't affect field workers of other genetic background all around the world.

      • throwup238 an hour ago ago

        It does. This article is about Latino workers but there are well known hotspots for CKDu in Sri Lanka and India. There’s other reports of it in the rest of Asia, Middle East, and Africa but its not as well known of an issue and under reported.

    • card_zero 2 hours ago ago

      What's the popular food that contains lots of oxalates? I don't see anyone binging on sorrel or star fruit or parsley.

      • christophilus an hour ago ago

        It’s in loads of things. Peanuts, spinach, beans, chocolate, avocados, corn, soy… the list is endless. If someone is really sensitive, they can have problems with high oxalate foods. Some people seem to accumulate oxalates, meaning their problems compound, where others have no problem at all. Biology is weird.

      • nine_k an hour ago ago

        Spinach. Many nuts, e.g. almonds. Many beans (including cocoa but excluding coffee). Well, potatoes!

      • thelastgallon an hour ago ago

        Spinach. Maybe other leafy vegetables.

        • 4lx87 an hour ago ago

          Spinach is very high per serving, but all sorts of foods can have high oxalates per serving. Sweet potato, Swiss chard, almonds, beets, chocolate. You'd have to consult the content per serving for all foods you consume if you're trying to avoid them.

      • jrootabega an hour ago ago

        Spinach and almonds.

        • card_zero an hour ago ago

          I'm frequenting clinics

          'Cos I eats my spinach,

          I've kidney the failure, man

  • bawolff an hour ago ago

    Did these people never have a blood test/urine test prior to this? Normal Kidney disease should show up on tests long before the stage of collapsing.

    I'm not a doctor, but if its sudden onset, all in a similar socio-economic-cultutal group, i would assume there was some sort of toxin they were all exposed to, perhaps at work.

    • stevenwoo 24 minutes ago ago

      It’s mentioned in the article it’s been documented in Central America for more than ten years in manual laborers but with few clues - possibly genetic predisposition combined with heat and physical exertion. It’s different types of manual labor so toxin exposure seems unlikely unless it turns out all of them got poisoned doing the same type of manual labor at one point and I would speculate they would have figured it out by now in Central America if it was toxin exposure.

      https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/7538343...

    • TranquilMarmot an hour ago ago

      I assume that they do not have regular access to medical care, especially if they are immigrant workers.

      Anecdotally, I have chronic kidney disease that would not have shown up on routine bloodwork / urinalysis. Only after multiple acute episodes did I get a biopsy for a diagnosis, and even that took a year of bouncing between specialists in a big city with good healthcare.

    • trentor an hour ago ago

      I get doing a blood panel once a year or so if you are not scraping by but never heard of doing a urine test without indication.

      • thaeli an hour ago ago

        A routine urinalysis has always been part of my normal annual physicals.

        • cratermoon 2 minutes ago ago

          Bold of you to think undocumented workers making subsistence wages under a brutal system have access to annual physicals, much less the sort of continuously documented medical history needed to spot and address abnormalities before they become life-threatening emergencies.

  • profsummergig an hour ago ago

    are these the same workers who pluck vegetables while they're being sprayed with pesticides and herbicides?

  • EA-3167 an hour ago ago

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11093537/

    The best guesses are both chronic rather than single acute injuries. High heat, dehydration, hard work, exposure to nitrites and who knows what else.

    It’s mysterious because the specific etiology is unclear and therefore hard to prevent, since telling field workers not to work in the heat will be ignored by all involved.

  • bamboozled an hour ago ago

    I wonder if this is what regulations were for?

  • doc_ick an hour ago ago

    Don’t worry, raw milk will save the day

    *they said crying