Researchers said Thursday they have identified gene variants that help explain high rates of renal disease among African-Americans, who have a four times greater risk of kidney problems than whites.

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According to the study published in the journal Science, variants in the APOL1 gene are the culprits, and likely evolved as a survival mechanism against lethal parasites in Africa.

Investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles found patients with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and hypertension-attributed end-stage kidney disease (H-ESKD) had variants in the APOL1 gene that changed the APOL1 protein sequence.

“We found that the APOL1 risk genes for renal disease occur in more than 30 percent of African-American chromosomes,” co-senior author Martin Pollak of Harvard Medical School said in a statement.

“In fact, the increased risk of kidney disease in individuals who inherited two copies of these variant forms of APOL1 is reported to be approximately 10-fold.”

FSGS is an injury to the kidney’s filtering system and ESKD indicates a kidney failure so severe the patient needs dialysis or a kidney transplant.

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