For several years now, a mysterious kidney disease epidemic has been underway in several parts of the global South. The victims are young, male outdoor workers - far from the usual demographic of older patients with sedentary lifestyles and a history of diabetes or high blood pressure. In Central America, thousands of young men who work in the sugar cane plantations have died of failing kidneys; in Sri Lanka and parts of rural India, it is rice farmers who are similarly afflicted. Although the "mystery disease" has garnered medical attention - at first as an anomaly, but increasingly as an inexplicable mass killer - for over 20 years now, the causes remain unknown. In fact, the disease goes by the moniker "chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology" (CKDu) to distinguish it from the ordinary form, CKD.
