Body Composition And Glomerular Filtration Rate In Chronic Kidney Disease Patients: Males Are Different From Females?

Abstract

Malnutrition is frequent in end-stage renal disease patients treated by dialysis. Few data are available on the evaluation of nutritional status in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients at different renal functional stage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the decreased renal function on body composition of CKD patients. To assess renal function, glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was measured as the renal clearance of 99^mTc-DTPA in 1016 (533 males and 483 females) CKD patients. Body composition was evaluated by means of single-frequency bioimpedance analysis (BIA). Values of fat mass (FM), fat-free mass (FFM), body cell mass (BCM) and extra-cellular water (ECW) were indexed to squared height of patients, similarly to body mass index (BMI). BMI and FMI significantly increased with the reduction of GFR in females, while were unchanged in males. FFMI was unmodified independently from the gender. BCMI significantly decreased only in males, while was unmodified in females. Finally, ECWI significantly increased in all patients. These results indicate significant differences between male and female CKD patients, and in particular a different effect of decreased GFR on body mass and body composition in male and female patients.