One of the hallmarks of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is hypertension. True, most patients with advanced kidney disease get hypertension anyways–but often the degree of hypertension in ADPKD patients seems to be especially high. Is there…
Very cool project: The Nephrology Oral History Project. On their homepage you can access interviews with 14 different nephrologists who practiced during the early days of dialysis, as early as the 1950s and 1960s. It’s well-organized in that…
It’s the weekend, I need to decompress from the boards. Here’s some random kidney-related clips. The first is pretty bizarre. This next one is pretty basic, but the animation is good.
First things first: last week’s poll results showed that the majority of individuals were wary of using physician “Pay For Performance” as a strategy towards increasing AV fistula placement rates. Proponents of this strategy (see editorial by Hakim…
Antibodies are comprised of the structure noted on the left: they have two immunoglobulin heavy chains (in blue) and two immunoglobulin light chains (in green), covalently linked with one another via disulfide bonds (in red). The light chains…
T-Minus 2 days to the Nephrology Boards exams! For any of you out there studying, one useful resource is ASN’s “NephSAP Core Knowledge Questions“, which can be easily reached via the ASN web page. Unlike the main NephSAP…
The “reset osmostat” is a cause of hyponatremia, sometimes considered a variant of SIADH, in which the kidney retains its ability to appropriately concentrate and dilute the urine; however, the threshold for ADH secretion is reset downward. That…
The aminoglycosides are amongst the most well-known nephrotoxic drugs. Yet due to their efficacy against many organisms, they are amongst the most common antibiotics used. The next time your nephrology service goes toe-to-toe with the infectious disease service…
Final results of last week’s Poll of the Week: only 13% of individuals said they outright disapproved of the proposed Kidney Allocation Score, the scoring system which has been proposed to replace the current system of determining kidney…
Cryoglobulinemia is characterized by the presence of circulating antibodies which precipitate at cooler temperatures, and not infrequently leads to renal failure/glomerulonephritis. The stereotypical histologic lesion of cryoglobulinemia is membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, which takes the appearance on light microscopy of…
