Chronic kidney disease associated with heavy metal exposure and agrochemicals in Latin America

Abstract

Introduction: The Pan American Health Organization recognizes Chronic Kidney Disease of Nontraditional Causes as a serious form of kidney failure of uncertain etiology, which has reached devastating epidemic proportions in communities and saturation of health systems. Hypotheses related to infections, dehydration, global warming, hyperuricemia, exposure to agrochemicals or heavy metals and genetic susceptibility are mentioned, however, these hypotheses have not been conclusive. Objective: To carry out a systematic review on the relationship between non-traditional kidney disease and sociodemographic factors, agricultural exposure or heavy metals in the Latin American population. Methodology: An integrative systematic review was carried out under the PRISMA guide in the Medigraphic, BioMed Central, Wiley Online Library, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PubMed and Scopus databases. With the keywords: kidney disease, nephritis, heavy metals, agrochemicals, risk factor. Of which 39 studies were included after evaluating their methodological quality. Results: it was found that 35.89% of the included studies had a high scientific rigor. Regarding the causes, it was found that exposure to agrochemicals was the most frequent cause of this disease. Conclusion: Heavy metals and agrochemicals have been shown to influence the development of Chronic Kidney Disease of Nontraditional Causes, however, most of the results are not generals and doesn´t demonstrate a statistically significant relationship. Sociodemographic factors have been little studied and more rigorous scientific research on this variable is required.