• Posted June 16, 2025

COVID Vaccine Protects Against Kidney Damage During Infection

MONDAY, June 16, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Kidney damage is common during a severe case of COVID-19, but vaccination appears to protect people against this life-threatening side effect, a new study says. 

Unvaccinated COVID patients with kidney damage severe enough to require dialysis are nearly three times as likely to die in the hospital compared with those vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to findings published in the June issue of the journal Kidney Medicine.

Unvaccinated patients given dialysis also are more than twice as likely to die following their discharge from a hospital or to require dialysis after going home, results show.

“The COVID-19 vaccine is an important intervention that can decrease the chances of developing complications from the COVID-19 infection in patients hospitalized with acute kidney injuries,” said lead researcher Dr. Niloofar Nobakht, health sciences clinical associate professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“It is important for individuals to discuss the benefits of getting vaccinated for COVID-19 with their doctors as it can decrease the chances of needing dialysis, which can severely affect the quality of life of patients and lead to further complications including death,” she said in a news release.

As many as 46% of people hospitalized for COVID suffer acute kidney injury, with some requiring dialysis as their kidneys recover from infection-related damage, researchers said in background notes.

For the new study, researchers tracked about 3,500 patients hospitalized with COVID between March 2020 and March 2022.

About 48% of fully vaccinated COVID patients suffered kidney damage during their infection, compared with 42% unvaccinated patients.

But nearly 16% of unvaccinated patients had kidney damage so severe they required dialysis, compared with 11% of vaccinated patients.

Overall, unvaccinated patients requiring dialysis were:

• 2.8 times more likely to die in the hospital.

• 2.4 times more likely to die following their discharge.

• 2.6 times more likely to remain on dialysis after going home.

After accounting for other factors, unvaccinated patients overall were 5.5 times more likely to die in the hospital and 4.8 times more likely to die during long-term follow-up, results show.

“This study also emphasizes the importance of the need for continued research in understanding how COVID-19 infections affect the kidney and how we should manage and monitor kidney complications from COVID-19 infections to improve patient outcomes,” Nobakht said.

More information

The National Kidney Foundation has more on COVID-19 and kidney disease.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, June 13, 2025