Dr. Brotman and his team found that patients with higher resting heart rates had a 2-fold increased risk of developing kidney failure many years later. Individuals with a lower beat-to-beat variability in heart rate had a 1.5-fold increased risk. Therefore, heart rate measurements could serve as a way to identify patients at higher risk of developing kidney damage.

While the findings do not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, the authors postulate that dysautonomia may negatively impact the health of blood vessels in and around the kidneys. "We hope our findings will encourage further research to better define the putative role of the autonomic nervous system in precipitating and exacerbating renal disease in humans," the authors wrote. "This, in turn, may ultimately lead to novel therapeutic approaches once the mechanisms for our findings are better characterized," they added.

SOURCE Journal of the American Society Nephrology