Kidney disease rarely announces itself. No sharp pain. No dramatic warning. It just sits there, quietly doing damage, until one day it can’t be ignore.

About one in eight women with gestational diabetes had evidence of kidney dysfunction at 5 months postpartum, according to study data published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Scientists have uncovered why people with chronic kidney disease so often die from heart problems: damaged kidneys release tiny particles into the bloodstream that actively poison the heart. These particles,