Covid vaccination protects against severe kidney damage, study suggests

Complications from a Covid infection can harm the heart, brain, lungs and kidneys.

Complications from a Covid infection can harm the heart, brain, lungs and kidneys. A new study finds that patients hospitalized for Covid were less likely to suffer severe kidney damage if they were vaccinated.

Researchers at UCLA Health analyzed electronic medical records at a large academic hospital between March 1, 2020, and March 30, 2022, of approximately 3,500 hospitalized patients, ages 18 and older, and compared hospitalized patients who got at least two primary doses of the Moderna or Pfizer mRNA vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine for Covid with hospitalized patients who had not been vaccinated.

The researchers examined which participants developed kidney disease severe enough to require a type of dialysis known as CRRT, or continuous renal replacement therapy. The nonstop dialysis therapy does the work of the kidneys by filtering and removing waste from the blood. It's typically used when a patient is in intensive care, said lead author Dr. Niloofar Nobakht, health sciences clinical associate professor of medicine in nephrology at UCLA Health.

The study found that 16% of unvaccinated patients with Covid were more likely to need CRRT, compared with 11% of vaccinated patients during their hospital admission. Unvaccinated patients were more than two-and-a-half times as likely to need CRRT after leaving the hospital — and also had a much higher risk of dying after being discharged, compared with vaccinated patients.

In a 2021 study, researchers at Yale University School of Medicine found that among hospitalized patients with Covid, approximately 30% develop acute kidney injury — an abrupt, usually reversible form of kidney dysfunction. Patients hospitalized with Covid were twice as likely to need dialysis than patients hospitalized for other reasons.