What is it?
Chronic kidney disease includes conditions that damage your kidneys and decrease their ability to keep you healthy. If kidney disease gets worse, wastes can build to high levels in your blood and make you feel sick. You may develop complications like high blood pressure, anemia (low blood count), weak bones, poor nutritional health and nerve damage.

Kidney disease also increases your risk of having heart and blood vessel disease. These problems may happen slowly over a long period of time. Chronic kidney disease may be caused by diabetes, high blood pressure and other disorders. Early detection and treatment can often keep chronic kidney disease from getting worse. When kidney disease progresses, it may eventually lead to kidney failure, which requires dialysis or a kidney transplant to maintain life.

What causes it?
Anyone can get chronic kidney disease at any age. However, some people are more likely than others to develop kidney disease. You may have an increased risk for kidney disease if you: have diabetes, high blood pressure, or a family history of chronic kidney disease; are older, or belong to an ethnic group that has a high rate of diabetes or high blood pressure, such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian, Pacific Islanders and American Indians.

How does it affect my job?
Kidney disease should not affect your ability to work in the early stages. However, if left untreated, kidney disease can lead to kidney failure, which means you would need to go on dialysis, and possibly seek a kidney transplant. Dialysis is time-consuming and would affect your ability to work full-time.

Can it be prevented or treated?
One important way to avoid kidney disease is to follow a healthy lifestyle to prevent diabetes and hypertension, which are major risk factors for kidney disease. Early detection and treatment can often slow or stop chronic kidney disease. How well your treatment can achieve this goal depends on your stage of chronic kidney disease when you start treatment, how carefully you follow your treatment plan, and the cause of your kidney disease, because some forms of kidney disease are more difficult to control.