Melbourne: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) may hamper academic skills, executive function and memory, a study has found.
CKD in children clearly affects their physical health, but research also indicates that it can have impacts on neurocognitive function.
"This research provides relevant information on the areas of need - for example, working memory and mathematics - for which children with CKD may need guidance, practice and assistance, particularly for children on dialysis," said Kerry Chen from the University of Sydney in Australia.
"It also suggests hypotheses for why the overall intellectual and educational outcomes of children with CKD are reduced compared with the general population, and how best to prevent deficits," Chen said.
For the study, published in the journal CJASN, the researchers examined all of the published evidence on cognitive and academic outcomes in children and adolescents with CKD.
Their analysis included 34 studies with more than 3,000 CKD patients under the age of 21 years.
Children with CKD also had lower scores than the general population in executive function and memory domains, and they scored lower in tests of academic skills related to mathematics, reading, and spelling.
The global cognition IQ of children with CKD was classified as low-average.
