A recent article suggests that your genetic background dictates how long you might survive on dialysis. The work suggests that Hispanics tend to live longer than blacks and whites.
It's known that your ethnic background can affect how likely you are to need dialysis - diabetes is more common among some races for example, as mentioned here, so should it be surprizing that your survival time is also dependent on your race?
A number of theories exist as to why Hispanic and black dialysis patients tend to live longer than whites. It may be that Hispanic and black patients are more likely to die before they develop kidney failure, and those who survive are generally healthier and thus more likely to live longer than white patients, the researchers suggested.
The researchers examined data from the United States Renal Data System involving 1,282,201 adults on dialysis between 1995 and 2009.
Source: Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, news release, March 28, 2013
Abstract
