The impact of underlying diseases-related drugs on the chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus in hemodialysis patients

Uremic pruritus or chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKD-aP) is a frequent compromising symptom in end-stage renal disease. Despite the little attention paid to drugs used among hemodialysis (HD) patients, investigating medications used in this population of patients and examining the status of CKD-aP may lead to the identification of medications that improve or worsen the pruritus condition. We aimed to assess the role of underlying diseases-related drugs on CKD-aP in HD patients. We performed a case - control study on HD patients aged over 18 years old. The demographic data and clinical parameters including HD parameters, drug history, dermatologic assessments, and laboratory examination were assessed. We compared 128 patients with CKD-aP as cases and 109 patients without CKD-aP as controls. Cases were on the longer course of dialysis (44.69 ± 43.24 months for cases vs. 38.87 ± 50.73 months for controls; = 0.02). In multiple analyses of variables related to CKD-aP, backward LR logistic regression revealed that only atorvastatin ( = 0.036) was considered to be a predictive factor associated with CKD-aP. Thus, the use of atorvastatin reduced the index of CKD-aP (95% confidence interval: 0.256-0.954, odd's Ratio = 0.494). Atorvastatin was associated with decreased frequencies of CKD-aP among HD patients in our study. This knowledge may guide further clinical trials to evaluate atorvastatin's immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory effects on the CKD-aP in HD populations.