Research from Madeleine Scammell is featured in a June 2025 piece in Nature: How a mysterious epidemic of kidney disease is killing thousands of young men., which discusses the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of unknown cause (CKDu) in Central America. CKDu affects people aged 20 and 50 years who often have no other known risk factors for kidney disease.
“It affirms a lot of what we hear anecdotally, which is that people start working when they’re young, they’re healthy. They have good kidney function, and then bang, they have stage-four kidney disease and will need dialysis soon,” says Madeleine Scammell.
Evidence from Professor Scammell’s research suggests that intense physical labor performed in extreme heat is likely a major driver of CKDu.