Healthy young men being struck down by mysterious kidney disease of unknown origins in Texas
Por Isabel Keane — – World RSS Feed
Healthy young men being struck down by mysterious kidney disease of unknown origins in Texas
Doctors in Texas have reported an increase in cases of chronic kidney disease of unknown origin — or CKDu — which can be fatal
Isabel Keane in New York Monday 21 September 2026 16:45 BST
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A growing number of otherwise healthy young men in the United States have been diagnosed with an unexplained form of kidney disease.
Doctors in Texas have reported an increase in cases of chronic kidney disease of unknown origin — or CKDu — which can be fatal.
The condition is also known as Mesoamerican Nephropathy, a reference to the fact it is typically found in Central America. Researchers have also discovered CKDu in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal but these are the first known cases in the U.S., health care practitioners told Texas Monthly.
Epidemiologists cannot agree on what exactly causes CKDu, though studies have consistently found that physical labor in extreme heat is a contributing factor.
American health experts are now worried about a potential wave of CKDu cases especially among agricultural workers.
open image in galleryPeople with CKDu don’t show typical risk factors of kidney disease like hypertension or diabetes, according to a 2024 paper published in the medical journal, Pathophysiology.
The condition is “a worldwide hidden health threat that is associated with progressive loss of kidney functions without showing any initial symptoms until reaching end-stage rental failure, eventually leading to death,” the researchers wrote.
Most people affected by the disease are Latino men, between the ages of 20 and 60, who work under extreme conditions.
“In Central America, CKDu is hypothesized to be associated with occupational and environmental exposures mainly affecting young men working in lowland agricultural settings, most notably sugarcane harvesters,” researchers published in a 2023 public health journal.
It’s not completely clear why the condition disproportionally impacts agricultural workers and those doing intense physical labor.
“The population is so vulnerable and has such limited access to health services at all that screening for kidney disease is not on the radar,” epidemiologist Rebecca Fischer told Texas Monthly.
“This is a disease of poverty. It’s a neglected disease, in a neglected population in a neglected part of the world, in impoverished communities that, frankly, many people are not paying attention to.”
open image in galleryIt was not immediately clear how many CKDu cases have recently been found in Texas, though Ricardo Nuila, an internist at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital, told Texas Monthly he’d seen instances of it nearly ever day.
Nuila wasn’t the only one noticing in increase in cases. His colleague, Sreedhar Mandayam, a nephrologist at the hospital, noticed an alarming spike in emergency-dialysis patients who were young men, many undocumented, from Central America or Mexico.
“We and lots of other people were beginning to wonder, ‘Why is this happening?’” he said.
As part of a research project, Fischer, the epidemiologist, began to ask these patients questions when they came in to the hospital about where they grew up, where they lived and worked. Nearly all of the men fit the profile of a CKDu patient — someone who did manual labor, was under 40 and originally from Central America or Mexico.
Medical records from the hospital between 2012 and 2015 showed that out of 346 cases of kidney failure in an uninsured or undocumented patient, 17 had no identifiable cause, according to Texas Monthly.
That figure was shocking to researchers, who say it suggests thousands of emergency-dialysis visits to Texas hospitals each year could be attributable to CKDu. There was no data showing exactly how many of those cases resulted in death.
Fisher said more research is needed to get to the bottom of the disease. “It’s such a fascinating medical problem, right? A mystery to solve, and so many people want to solve it,” she said. “We are quite far, still, from understanding exactly what’s going on.”
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TexasCentral AmericaUnited StatesHoustonkidney diseaseextreme heatDiabetes
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