Mysterious disease sending young, healthy Texas workers into kidney failure

A mysterious form of kidney disease that has devastated young to middle-aged agricultural workers in Central America and South Asia appears to have surfaced in Texas.

Known as chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) — or Mesoamerican nephropathy — the condition continues to baffle researchers, as some otherwise healthy adults develop kidney failure without having any of the traditional risk factors.

Chronic kidney disease can range from mild to severe, potentially causing fluid buildup and increasing the risk of high blood pressure , heart disease, stroke and premature death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CAN ALKALINE WATER ACTUALLY IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH? EXPERTS SEPARATE FACT FROM FICTION But unlike typical cases, CKDu develops without common risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension and glomerulonephritis, a disease that inflames and damages the kidneys' filtering units, according to Dr.

Gokul Paidi, a family medicine physician at Community Healthcare Network in New York.

"It typically strikes young to middle-aged adults, more often men, who work in agriculture and manual labor in hot, low-resource regions," he told Fox News Digital.

Several regional kidney diseases have been described over the decades, although not all are considered CKDu.

"Balkan endemic nephropathy has been documented since the 1950s, Itai itai disease in Japan was tied to cadmium contaminated rice, and Sri Lanka nephropathy has been studied since the 1990s," said Paidi, who has published a review on the condition.

Mesoamerican nephropathy – which was first described among sugarcane workers in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the late 1990s – is the form now being reported in the U.S., he noted.

Other locations have reported similar types of local epidemics, including Sri Lanka, India, rural Thailand and the Tierra Blanca area in Mexico, according to previous research.

"What’s emerging is that these are likely related conditions, essentially clusters of the same underlying disease process showing up in different farming and industrial regions around the world," Paidi said.

Physicians at Houston safety-net hospitals , including Ben Taub, have treated otherwise healthy men in their 20s and 30s who presented with kidney failure — some with "Coca-Cola-colored urine," according to Texas Monthly.

They reportedly don’t have any of the typical risk factors that cause kidney disease, like high blood pressure or diabetes.

HEART ATTACKS AND STROKES RISING WITH EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS, RESEARCH SUGGESTS "What’s striking about the Texas cases is how closely they mirror what we saw originally in Central America," Paidi noted.