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…
The normalized protein catabolic rate (nPCR) is a formula commonly used to assess dietary protein intake in dialysis patients, as a means towards determining nutritional adequacy, a major problem in many ESRD patients. For example, say you have…
Although the complement cascade is an essential aspect of the response to infection, it unfortunately can be activated by a variety of means in several types of kidney disease. In common day clinical practice, most of the time…
Although the majority of membranous nephropathy falls under the “idiopathic” category, there are a variety of causes of secondary membranous nephropathy. It is quite important to eliminate these entities as possible diagnoses, as the treatment for secondary membranous…
The results from last week’s Poll of the Week are in, and in general, a majority of individuals (64%) felt that their training programs did a good job of teaching them the art of the renal biopsy, while…
We are taught that water is freely diffusable via cell membranes–even in the absence of aquaporin function, there are usually some water molecules which traverse the lipid bilayer. However, there are tissues within the human body which must…