New cases of end-stage renal disease in the U.S. have declined for the third year in a row, potentially signaling a downward trend, researchers reported.

There were 114,813 new ESRD patients in 2012 — a 3.7% drop from 2011, according to an analysis of data from the United States Renal and Dialysis System (USRDS).

“Early trends indicate that the ESRD incidence rate may have begun to decrease after having plateaued for many years,” researchers wrote in the report, which was published online.

Rajiv Saran, MD, of the University of Michigan, and director of the USRDS coordinating center, said that while it’s “too soon to declare victory on the war against the rising tide of kidney failure,” their report “provides some good news about kidney disease in the U.S.”

“We will follow these trends closely to see whether they are sustained over the coming years, study what factors may be responsible for bringing about this positive change, and explore how it may be even further accelerated,” he added.

Saran told MedPage Today that some factors that could account for the decline could include earlier detection of chronic kidney disease, better CKD guidelines such as KDOQI, more appropriate referrals to kidney specialists “perhaps as a result of more frequent eGFR reporting by laboratories,” better detection and care of upstream CKD risk factors such as diabetes and hypertension, and better CKD care in general that results in slower disease progression.

Despite the decrease in incidence, 636,905 patients were still being treated for ESRD in 2012 — a 1.3% increase from the prior year.

But the rate of growth of the prevalent ESRD population is slowing, researchers said, with the percentage increases in 2011 and 2012 being the lowest recorded in the last 3 decades.

About 450,000 ESRD patients were being treated with dialysis, while 186,303 had a functioning kidney transplant. There were 17,330 transplants in 2012, including 5,617 from living donors.

And 28,867 patients were added to transplant waiting lists, including both the kidney and kidney/pancreas lists. Nearly 82,000 patients were on the transplant list at the end of 2011, the researchers said.