As an influential factor of many chronic diseases, alcohol consumption has been increasingly studied in recent years. Many studies have shown that alcohol consumption is related to cardiovascular disease, urinary protein, and CKD [3,6,16,45,66–69]. This review focused on 21 clinical studies of the relationship between alcohol consumption and CKD, including 13 cohort studies and 8 cross-sectional studies. The characteristics of the study design and other details of these studies are presented in Table 1. Some studies found that ethanol has an influence on renal damage, such as apoptosis and epithelial mesenchymal transdifferentiation. Nesreen and Sayed discovered that alcohol consumption significantly increased renal caspase3, caspase8, and caspase9 activity, and ethanol toxicity can increase the ratios of Bax and Bcl-2 in kidney tissues compared to a control group [24,25].

Alcohol Consumption Can be a “Double-Edged Sword” for Chronic Kidney Disease Patients

When your kidneys don’t function the way they should, prescription and over-the-counter medications can build up in your blood and may cause additional damage to your kidneys or other parts of your body… If you are living with diabetes and kidney disease, it is important to stay in control of your blood sugar so you can be your healthiest and avoid other… Most of the metabolic reactions essential to life are highly sensitive to the acidity (i.e., hydrogen ion concentration) of the surrounding fluid. The kidneys play an important role in regulating acidity, thereby helping determine the rate at which metabolic reactions proceed.

• Your doctor may prescribe kidney medication or recommend programs in your area to help you.
• Former drinkers are mostly remarkable, as their health status may be worse, and morbidity and mortality are higher than never drinkers [27].
• In addition to filtering blood, your kidneys do many other important jobs.

How to Increase Calories in Your CKD Diet

This indicates that long-term ethyl alcohol consumption can activate both intrinsic and extrinsic pathways of apoptosis in the kidneys (Figure 1). However, other studies found that long-term alcohol consumption aggravates renal fibrosis, which may be related to epithelial mesenchymal transdifferentiation and fibrosis induced by ethanol [33,47,56]. Having more than three how does alcohol affect the kidneys drinks in a day (or more than seven per week) for women, and more than four drinks in a day (or more than 14 per week) for men, is considered “heavy” drinking. Heavy drinking on a regular basis has been found to double the risk for kidney disease. The association of baseline alcohol consumption and decline in kidney function over 12 years among 5729 participants.

Can kidneys recover from alcohol damage?

Extended and severe conditions, such as CKD or kidney failure, might be irreversible. Treatment options such as dialysis or kidney transplantation may become necessary (20). Kidney failure and alcohol use are often linked, and it seems there’s no turning back once damage is done. You might wonder if you can continue to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or your favorite craft IPA. The answer will depend on a few things, including your current health.

• High alcohol consumption can have both short-term and long-term effects on kidney health.
• These changes can be profound in chronic alcoholic patients, who may demonstrate clinical evidence of dehydration.
• Results of the multivariable Cox proportional hazards analysis of the incidence of chronic kidney disease.
• This leads to impaired function of the kidneys and increases the risk of developing kidney stones.

How does alcohol affect kidneys?

Too often, some of these regular drinkers have more than five drinks at one time. In fact, about a quarter of drinkers reported they had done this on at least one day in the past year. “Binge” drinking has harmful effects on the kidney that can even lead to acute kidney failure. This often goes away after a time, but it can occasionally lead to lasting kidney damage.

Drinking Alcohol Affects Your Kidneys

Although hepatorenal syndrome often ensues after an event that reduces blood volume (e.g., gastrointestinal bleeding), it also can occur without any apparent precipitating factor. Some observers have noted that patients with cirrhosis frequently develop hepatorenal syndrome following hospital admission, possibly indicating that a hospital-related event can trigger the syndrome. Regardless of the precipitating factor, patients who develop kidney failure in the course of alcoholic cirrhosis have a grave prognosis. The events leading to abnormal sodium handling in patients with cirrhosis are complex and controversial, however. Investigators have advanced several theories suggesting the involvement of a constellation of hormonal, neural, and hemodynamic mechanisms (Epstein 1996; Laffi et al. 1996). The traditional hypothesis holds that the kidneys of cirrhotic patients retain sodium in response to ascites that develops when liver dysfunction causes blood vessels to expand beyond available plasma volume (i.e., the “underfill” theory).

• When you have liver disease, your body doesn’t balance the flow and filtering of blood as well as it should.
• See your doctor to treat kidney stones or a kidney infection if they are the cause.
• However, some studies have found that ethanol can directly cause kidney damage, independent of liver damage [28,30,31].
• Alcohol can perturb these controls, however, to a degree that varies with the amount of alcohol consumed and the particular mechanism’s sensitivity.
• To reduce harm to a person’s health, it is best to reduce or avoid consuming alcoholic drinks where possible.

The slope of decline in the eGFR estimated over 12 years was less steep in the higher alcohol intake groups (Fig. 3). The right treatment option for kidney pain related to alcohol depends on the cause. A person is at risk of different complications depending on the underlying cause of the kidney pain. A person may feel intense back pain or pain in their genitals or stomach as the body attempts to pass the stone.

Potential Mechanisms of Alcoholic Kidney Injury: Lessons From Experimental Studies

Calabrese and Rizza (1999) found that ethanol induced a significant increase in the levels of fatty acid ethyl esters. They measured the highest levels in the heart, followed by kidney, brain, and liver. Studies suggest that ethanol consumption may increase renal expression of other potential sources of free radicals involving a family of enzymes called nitric oxide synthases (Tirapelli et al. 2012). Nitric oxide synthase stimulates the production of nitric oxide, which, if produced excessively, can react with other molecules and create free radicals that trigger tissue damage in the kidneys (Pacher et al. 2007; Szalay et al. 2015). Tirapelli and colleagues (2012) showed that ethanol consumption increased the expression of two nitric oxide synthases. However, it is still unclear exactly how ethanol upregulates nitric oxide synthases, or whether it does so directly or indirectly.

Investigators have not yet fully explained the mechanisms underlying this wide range of abnormalities, though, and have devoted little attention to alcohol’s effects on kidney hemodynamics in people who do not have liver disease. Ethanol administration in rats showed particular alterations in the renal antioxidant system and glutathione status [4,5]. Polyphenols, which are found in beverages, such as red wine, also have antioxidant effects [6,7]. However, another rat model showed that ethanol may increase blood pressure and angiotensin II type 1 receptor expression, causing glomerular morphology changes. This may lead to renal corpuscle and glomeruli atrophy and reduced glomeruli volume [8].