Familial risk, age at onset, and cause of end-stage renal disease in white Americans.

A strong familial clustering of ESRD has been reported among African Americans, suggesting that factors predisposing to renal failure, whether genetic, environmental, or both, may disproportionately affect certain families. A case-control study was undertaken to determine if a familial risk of ESRD was present among white Americans, if this risk differed among causes of ESRD, and if variability in age at onset was attributed to familial factors. Data were obtained from 103 white American patients (cases) with ESRD receiving dialysis treatments at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine's affiliated dialysis facility in Winston-Salem, NC. One hundred three age-, sex- and race-matched non-ESRD controls were consecutively selected from the Wake Forest University Physicians internal medicine clinic. Odds ratios (OR) and associated 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to signify the prevalence of a relative with ESRD among cases versus controls. The presence of either a first- or second-degree relative increased a white American's risk for developing ESRD nearly threefold (OR = 2.7, 95% CI 1.1 to 7.2; P = 0.038), whereas the presence of either a first-, second- or third-degree relative with ESRD increased the risk nearly fourfold (OR = 3.5, 95% CI 1.5 to 8.4; P = 0.004). Cases with chronic glomerulonephritis and Type II diabetic nephropathy as the cause of ESRD had relatives with ESRD more often than cases with Type I diabetic nephropathy, interstitial nephritis, or renal artery stenosis. The average correlation (f) of ages at onset of ESRD among individuals in a single family (cases and their relatives) was 55%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)