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Now, some believe that the daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress (from working in the fields in a sub-tropical zone) is to blame.

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

Not knocking you, justlurking, knocking the "some who believe that..."

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

I think that's a good point, and there appears to be some dispute over it. The question is whether this is something new, or if the rate of death due to kidney failure is simply rising due to better diagnosis and record keeping.

Consider the numbers: the rate has doubled from 2000 to 2010. But, the absolute numbers are 466 to 1,047 in Nicaragua and 1,282 to 2,181 in El Salvador. Those aren't large numbers among a population of about 6 million in each country.

What the article proves (to me) yet never says is that the ability to have a disease diagnosed has improved. I’m sure if its literally working themselves to death then the cause has been around a long time and people have been dying from it for a long time. If they didn’t see a doctor 20 years ago then kidney disease is not something they would self diagnose.

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

Exactly. This is from something fairly recently introduced. Viral or Chemical, only a fool would think this will be contained south of the border.

Yes, because until the last decade no one in Central America ever worked in the fields and suffered a daily cycle of dehydration and heat stress.

A couple of decades ago the cause of death would be listed as natural causes and his family would say he had "worked himself to death"

Now they do autopsies and they find out reasons but that does not mean that the reasons were not there before only that they were not recorded.

BTW no one in the US dies from "old age" or "natural causes" any more which is causing the rate of certain conditions to appear to be higher then they were before.

A 25 year old man who died of a heart attack was listed as heart failure, the 70 year old man who died of a heart attack was usually listed as old age. They change they way they report things and suddenly you have a "spike". Because of this it can be very hard to tell what is signal and what is noise.

Since there is no spike in the surrounding area for people who do not work in the fields and since people who work in the fields that are in cooler areas also are not seeing any sort of spike it can be cautiously concluded that this is not caused by any thing more then more exact record keeping.