Kidney Health

Most creatinine and urea reports were below the cutoffs#

Of 8,059 creatinine results, 80 were above 1.3 mg/dL. Blood urea was lower still, with 15 results above 50 mg/dL out of 7,197. The third kidney-related marker on the same panels behaves differently: 1,342 of 7,986 uric-acid results were above the cutoff applied to them.

Those 8,059 creatinine reports divide as follows.

These are test reports from insured employees and covered family, not unique people or a representative workforce sample. Each test has its own base. Results exactly at a cutoff are not counted as above it. Methodology.

Mean creatinine in men was 0.87 mg/dL in WHI 2025 and 0.91 mg/dL here. The earlier sample described professionals, while this edition includes covered family; the difference does not establish a change in kidney health. WHI 2025 published no uric-acid or blood-urea figures.

Creatinine above the cutoff was about fourteen times as common at 60 and above as in the 20s#

Results above the cutoff were about fourteen times as common at 60 and above as in the 20s: 4.1% against 0.3%. The share was higher in each successive adult age band, and the absolute numbers stay small throughout: the oldest band's 4.1% is 25 reports.

About one in five male uric-acid reports exceeded the cutoff, against one in ten female reports#

22.1% of men's uric-acid reports were above 7 mg/dL, and 10.3% of women's were above 6 mg/dL. The male share is 2.1 times the female one.

The two shares are measured against two different lines. A ratio between them is not a comparison of how much uric acid men and women carry. It is a comparison of how often each group crosses its own laboratory threshold. The means compare concentrations in the same units, and they run the same way: 6.07 mg/dL across the 4,404 men's reports against 4.59 across the 3,582 women's.

Pooled across both sexes, the share above the sex-specific cutoffs does not climb steadily with age. It is higher in the 30s than in the 40s or 50s, and highest at 60 and above.

The combined figure hides different age patterns in male and female reports.

Men's uric-acid share peaks in their 30s; women's keeps rising to 27.2% at 60 and above#

Among men, the share above cutoff was highest at ages 30–39: 25.7% of 1,726 reports. Among women it was highest at the other end of the age range, 27.2% at 60 and above. Between the 40s and the 50s the two lines cross.

Men's share does not simply fall with age. It rises to the 30s, drops to its lowest in the 50s, then rises again at 60 and above. Women's rises in every band. Because the sexes are held to different cutoffs, the crossover means something precise: from age 50, a larger share of women exceeded 6 mg/dL than of men exceeded 7.

One study offers context for the female pattern, from outside this data. Among 7,662 US women aged 20 and over in a national health survey, serum uric acid after menopause was higher than before it once age, weight, diet, alcohol, kidney function, hypertension and diuretic use were accounted for, by 0.34 mg/dL after natural menopause and 0.36 after surgical menopause; women currently using postmenopausal hormones ran 0.24 mg/dL lower than those who were not. The authors concluded that the rise in women's uric acid with age may be explained by menopause and other age-related factors. That is a different population and a different measure from the shares above, and these reports record no menopausal status. Hak and Choi, Arthritis Research & Therapy, 2008.

The older bands are much smaller than the younger ones, with 348 male reports at 50–59 against 1,726 in the 30s, so their shares move on fewer results. Every band is made of people who came for a test, and the bands exclude 70 reports from people under 20 and one report with no recorded age.

Men's uric-acid share is above women's in all five metros, furthest apart in Pune#

In all five metros, men's reports were above cutoff more often than women's, and the widest split was in Pune, at 22.6% against 7.6%.

Across these five areas the male share spans 7.4 points, from Mumbai's 18.3% to Bengaluru's 25.7%. In four of the five, the gap between men and women is wider than that whole spread.

Mumbai is the exception, and the two figures behind it pull in opposite directions: it has the lowest male share of the five and the second-highest female share. The highest female share is Delhi NCR's, at 13.3%.

These five pincode-based reporting areas cover 6,879 of the 7,986 uric-acid reports. The shares describe tested reports, not city populations.

Elevated blood sugar was more common in reports with high uric acid: 44.2% against 36.2%#

In the 5,936 reports that carry both tests, elevated blood sugar was found in 44.2% of those above the uric-acid cutoff and in 36.2% of the rest, a gap of 7.9 percentage points.

The comparison needs both results in the same report, so it leaves out 2,050 of the 7,986 uric-acid reports, which carried no paired HbA1c result.

Two results appearing together in one report is co-occurrence, not a chain of cause and effect: the biomarker file is not linked to any individual record over time, so nothing here establishes that either result led to the other.

The comparison group is not a healthy baseline. More than a third of reports with a normal uric-acid result already had an HbA1c of 5.7% or above, so the 7.9-point gap sits on top of that floor rather than rising from zero.

What to check in kidney testing and follow-up#

The two markers on this page that describe filtration are each read against one fixed line. The two tests that would describe it properly, an eGFR and a urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio, are already recommended at least annually for everyone with diagnosed type 2 diabetes. These reports carry markers rather than diagnoses, so that list comes from a provider's records, not from this analysis. The American Diabetes Association's 2026 standard records that kidney disease in diabetes typically develops after about ten years in type 1, most often five to fifteen years from diagnosis, but may already be present at the diagnosis of type 2.

For context on why the kidney is worth an employer's attention at all even when these markers are low: a meta-analysis of community-based Indian studies puts chronic kidney disease prevalence at 13.2% among people aged 15 and above.