Introduction:

Health literacy is recognized as a result of the health education process. Knowledge about healthy lifestyles or measures necessary to avoid the development or progression of diseases is important in vulnerable stages such as youth.

Objective:

To evaluate the knowledge that young Cuban university students have about chronic kidney disease.

Material and Method:

Cross-sectional descriptive observational study. The study was carried out at the Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de las Villas, (Cuba). A sample of 420 students was obtained by stratified random probability sampling. The knowledge questionnaire on chronic kidney disease was used as an instrument. In addition, other variables such as sex, age, university degree, faculty, academic year and province of residence were collected.

Results:

55.7% of the young people had no previous knowledge about kidney disease. No statistically significant differences were found between men and women in terms of level of knowledge by subject categories. Statistically significant differences were found in the total score of the questionnaire between the different faculties and academic years.

Conclusions:

A higher level of knowledge is recognized in the thematic categories focused on symptoms, characteristics and detection of chronic kidney disease and predisposing factors, while the category related to associated comorbidities showed the worst results. The Faculties of Construction, Mathematics, Physics and Computing, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering showed better results in the answers offered.