Ultra-processed food consumption and the risk of incident chronic kidney disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies

Abstract

Background

Recent individual studies have indicated that ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption may be associated with the incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis based on those longitudinal studies evaluating the relationship between UPF consumption and the risk of incident CKD, and synthesizing the results.

Method

PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from inception through 22 March 2023. Any longitudinal studies evaluating the relationship between UPF consumption and the risk of incident CKD were included. Two researchers independently conducted the literature screening and data extraction. RR and its 95% CI were regarded as the effect size. The Newcastle–Ottawa Scale (NOS) was applied to assess the quality of the studies included, and the effect of UPF consumption on the risk of incident CKD was analyzed with STATA version 15.1. This study’s protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023411951).

Results

Four cohort studies with a total of 219,132 participants were included after screening. The results of the meta-analysis suggested that the highest UPF intake was associated with an increased risk of incident CKD (RR = 1.25; 95% CI: 1.18–1.33).

Conclusions

High-dose UPF intake was associated with an increased risk of incident CKD. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Thus, more standardized clinical studies and further exploration of the mechanisms are needed in the future.

Keywords:

• Ultra-processed food
• chronic kidney disease
• NOVA classification
• systematic review
• meta-analysis

Author contributions

B.X. and J.H. designed and conceptualized the research. J.L. and H.C. analyzed the data. B.X., J.H., L.C., and Y.L. wrote the manuscript, and L.F., F.T., W.O., and Y.W. revised it. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Y.W.], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2019YFE0196300).