High rates of obesity and diabetes amongst Americans may be the reason why people in the US experience a higher rate of kidney failure than Europeans. That's the word from a group of researchers who have studied the subject extensively, looking at the medical records of 65,000 Norwegians and compared them with those of 20,000 Americans.

The conclusion? Americans with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are two and a half times more likely to have their condition develop into end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and loss of kidney function. Serious? Yes, very. When your kidneys cease to function, you're looking at drastic measures: dialysis or a kidney transplant.

The interesting thing though is that the overall prevalence of CKD is about the same in the US as in Norway. So, researchers asked themselves, why is it that rates of ESRD are so much higher in the US? The difference, they say, is the aforementioned obesity and diabetes, both of which are major risk factors for kidney disease.