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CommonHealth: What Your Kidney Function May Say About Your Brain

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In today's CommonHealth segment, we take a closer look at a new study — which is just out in a leading nephrology journal — which has found that tests of your kidney function can apparently yield surprisingly telltale insights into the health of your brain, and possibly other organs as well.

The research looked at more than 1,700 women over age 70 in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study, following them for up to six years. It found that in women whose urine tests indicated the very beginnings of kidney dysfunction, their cognitive abilities — higher-order brain functions like memory and verbal fluency — declined two to seven times faster than normal.

We speak with Dr. Julie Lin, senior author of the study, and CommonHealth co-host Carey Goldberg.

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This program aired on January 24, 2012.

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