The outlook can seem bleak for people with end-stage kidney disease.
Their condition is irreversible, and those unable to receive or who are waiting for a kidney transplant must continuously rely on dialysis to clean their blood of toxins.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston, wanted to know if where the kidney dialysis patients called home -- particularly, the altitude at which they lived -- could have an effect on their mortality rate.
"Certain factors that respond to high altitude, to low oxygen exposure essentially, these factors that are activated under low oxygen circumstances may have beneficial effects," said Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmayer.
Which includes stimulating failing kidneys to make and maintain the supply of an important hormone called, erythropoietin.
"Which then in turns increases the formation of new red blood cells. If there are more red blood cells, there is more oxygen available for tissues to function," said Winkelmayer.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reviewed over 800,000 patient files from across the United States renal data system.
Patients were classified into 5 altitude groups based on their residential addresses. The results confirmed what the researchers predicted: mortality rates dropped as altitudes increased.
"Kidney disease patients who started dialysis at high altitudes, that is above 6000 feet above sea level, had a 15 per cent lower mortality rate compared to very similar patients who started dialysis at or approximately at sea level," said Dr. Winkelmayer.
So for patients with end-stage renal disease, living higher up might just mean living longer.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Dr. Rhonda Low
