Chronic Kidney Disease: Why Your eGFR Results Are Research Data

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Chronic kidney disease is measured in numbers more than in symptoms: an eGFR from a blood test, an albumin level from a urine test, repeated year after year. The direction those numbers take, and what happened in between, a new medicine, a change in diet, a hospital stay, tells the story of the disease. Research on how to slow kidney disease needs exactly those long series, joined to the person's own account of living with it.

How many people live with it

The Global Burden of Disease study estimated that 788 million people aged 20 years and older had chronic kidney disease in 2023, up from 378 million in 1990. Another GBD analysis counted 19,935,038 new cases in 2021.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on chronic kidney disease describes the tests that leave records:

• eGFR blood tests, at a minimum number of monitoring checks per year that depends on how far the disease has gone. Together they form the curve your kidney team watches.
• A urine albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR), which NICE asks to measure in adults with diabetes and in adults with an eGFR of less than 60.
• Potassium and eGFR around blood pressure medicines such as ACE inhibitors, before starting, between 1 and 2 weeks after starting and after each dose increase.
• Haemoglobin checks for people with anaemia of kidney disease, every 1 to 3 months in the maintenance phase of treatment.

Many patient apps and portals show your past eGFR results; a screenshot or export of that history is a valuable record on its own. If you do not have it, ask your practice or kidney clinic for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete chronic kidney disease story with a year of the records the guideline lists comes to about $41 per licence on the benchmark today. Every line and its source is on the chronic kidney disease page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every treatment you tried, from medicines to diet changes to dialysis. You can add blood and urine results and clinic letters as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. If you care for someone with kidney disease, you can share their story with their permission. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.