Cleveland Clinic study on a chemical produced by those gut bacteria throughout the digestion of red meat, eggs and high-fat dairy called TMAO, or or trimethylamine-N-oxide, has already established a link between these foods and increased risk of heart disease, and now points to an independent and both troubling connection to chronic kidney disease.

In a paper published online today in the journal Circulation Research, Clinic researchers Dr. Stanley Hazen and Dr. Wilson Tang report which patients having chronic kidney disorder had higher blood levels of TMAO, patients with higher blood levels of TMAO were in greater risk of death irrespective of the shape their kidneys were in and, in animals, chronic exposure to diets which increase TMAO in the bloodstream can actually worsen and cause kidney damage.

The results might help explain why patients with chronic kidney disorder die of heart disease, said Hazen, a fact that traditional risk factors for heart disease can’t adequately account for.

If the kidneys falter fail, the waste products eventually become toxic, causing damage and that they generally clear from your system build up in the blood. While investigators have long suspected something they have yet to have the ability to put a finger on one culprit.

TMAO seemed a goal said Hazen, who’s vice chair of research in the Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute.

Within their study, the Clinic analyzed 521 patients and more than 3,000 patients without kidney disorder, all who had undergone diagnostic heart imaging studies at the institution between 2001 and 2007. The researchers adopted their subjects to see how they fared and analyzed blood levels of TMAO over time.

TMAO appears to add to the decrease of their kidneys, further increasing the quantity of the material from the blood. More TMAO means higher cardiovascular disease and heart failure risk, and additional decline, according to the research.

(image source)