Heart and Kidney Diseases and Type 2 Diabetes May Be One Ailment
26 comments
·December 18, 2025matthewaveryusa
nxobject
Does the article not address that?
> The ties are so strong that in 2023 the American Heart Association grouped the conditions under one name: cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome (CKM), with “metabolic syndrome” referring to diabetes and obesity.
brandonb
HbA1c, or just diabetes as a binary variable, has been one of the main inputs into predicting heart attack risk for a long time.
The main marker of kidney function, eGFR, was added with the AHA/ACC's PREVENT equations in 2023.
I wrote a bit about the science behind heart risk calculators, and their various inputs like cholesterol, blood pressure, A1c, eGFR, and so on here: https://www.empirical.health/blog/heart-attack-risk-calculat...
shevy-java
It is all interconnected, but I am unsure about the claim made. The reason is simple: there can be numerous disease types. Person A may have different genetics than Person B, as one example, so responses of a body may be different for that reason alone; then there is lifestyle choice, health, age and so forth. So I don't agree with the claim in the title here that all is one ailment - that makes no sense to me.
bluGill
We are reasonably confident that diabetes causes heart and kidney disease. However the converse - if I have heart disease (or kidney) I also have diabetes is not true: there are many possible causes of heart or kidney disease.
This logic error is easy to make, and the headlines all too often imply it, but it isn't always true (sometimes it is).
itchyouch
I generally agree. It's all interconnected, and we could point to a singular cause, but to treat them all as one and of the same class of disease seems reductive and not useful.
Though, to be play devil's advocate for a second, it does seem that diabetes is typically where the symptoms start, and we do understand that diabetes is fundamentally metabolic and/or functional dysfunction in 1 or more of 7-ish different areas.
I think it's the level of perspective zoom + timing we take that makes the article's assertion either useful or not.
If we zoom out, while catching disease early on, and we address the metabolic conditions via lifestyle and/or certain drugs like GLP1, then we prevent the need to intervene on the kidney and cardiac front.
But if we zoom in to a specific issue, after disease has progressed a profound amount, a GLP1 intervention may be too little, too late.
Hopefully though, this may help the messaging to folks that if they are contending with metabolic disease that presents as diabetes, introducing lifestyle and pharma interventions early may be helpful on the larger epidemiological front.
qart
> Amy Bies was recovering in the hospital from injuries inflicted during a car accident in May 2007
When an article starts like this, I instantly close it and wait for proper sources. Anyway, the phrase "metabolic syndrome" has been gaining currency for the last few years. For those who don't want to read journal papers and meta-analyses, there are plenty of doctors and fitness coaches (on YouTube) who have made videos on how to get metabolic syndrome under control or even reverse it. And many of the doctors do a good job of filtering and summarizing the research.
barfoure
You’ve got more patience than me. I read the title and decided I won’t bother reading the rest.
epcoa
The term Metabolic Syndrome X has been around for more than a few years, unless nearly 40 is few (and I absolutely relate to that sentiment), just saying that concept was revved up in the 90s and of course has been an academic discussion going back to the early 20th century.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.atv.0000111245.75...
jeffbee
> When an article starts like this, I instantly close it
Why? You don't believe in car crashes or what?
gnatman
I think they probably mean “article that’s meant to share research but mostly shares anecdotes”. It’s a common framing for this kind of thing though, so they probably have to close a lot of articles after the first sentence.
qart
A friend of mine told me a few days ago that he thinks LLMs are already smarter than most humans. I agreed with him instantly.
nh23423fefe
Someone who wants to tell you something true doesn't lead their communication with emotional distraction. Kinda like how someone who is asking a real question doesn't disguise the question as an insult.
derektank
>Someone who wants to tell you something true doesn't lead their communication with emotional distraction.
This seems needlessly cynical. Someone can have multiple objectives in writing, to tell you facts and also to capture your attention or to convey an emotion and motivate you to action. Very little writing is done with a single purpose in mind. We don’t expect academics drafting research papers to eschew concerns about the impact the writing will have on their career for example.
Starting a story with an anecdote that humanizes the information is simply acknowledging the reality that people want more than just facts. If the latter was all they wanted, most of us would only read encyclopedias and textbooks.
jeffbee
It's not emotional distraction, it establishes the reason the subject was getting blood tests, which is revealed later in the same sentence. If this is your level of reading stamina you must find yourself very poorly informed. Even a tweet would be too long for you.
pas
It's extremely lazy "writing".
Seems absolutely unnecessary, forced, immeasurably trite, off-puttingly boring, overused, so brazenly cliché that there has to be some kind of counter-intuitive selection going on, like with the email scammers that target those who are not immediately noticing the fraudulent intent.
... or simply our arrogance is showing, after all average minds discuss people, right?
jeffbee
How many major national magazines have published your superior articles?
SilverElfin
> The ties are so strong that in 2023 the American Heart Association grouped the conditions under one name: cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome (CKM), with “metabolic syndrome” referring to diabetes and obesity.
Seems like this is mostly an extension of the previously existing label of metabolic syndrome, now including kidney. Ozempic is mentioned and I take that to mean obesity is the cause. But are some of these ailments like diabetes reversible?
liveoneggs
I think it's saying that diabetes (T2 is reliably reversible) causes damage to the heart and kidney but sometimes the connection isn't made and they treat the kidney/heart symptoms without addressing the cause (T2D).
>These three disorders could really be “CKM syndrome,” which can be treated with drugs like Ozempic
The article is trying so hard not to say that obesity is the cause. I call it the obesity pipeline: You start off young and obese and you don't have diabetes and it's all fine. Stay obese long enough and you get diabetes -> metformin. Stay in a diabetic state long enough and you get heart disease -> statins. These are obesity comorbidities.