Cool new resource for all those iPod/iPhone (or whatever your MP3 player or PDA of choice happens to be): the ASN Kidney News podcast series. I have been listening to these during days in the lab where I…
The discovery of aquaporins–the protein family of water channels which regulate water transport in the kidney and many other tissues–was considered significant enough to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Peter Agre in 2003. The aquaporins…
Sjogren’s syndrome is an autoimmune disorder in which there is immune-mediated damage to the exocrine glands which produce tears and saliva. Many patients (up to 25%) will have extraglandular manifestations of the disease, one of the possibilities of…
Okay, you’re probably not going to see this in your lifetime, but imagine how cool you’ll seem when you whip out “matchstick ingestion” as part of the differential diagnosis for hyperkalemia and AKI. Matchstick heads are comprised of…
Heard an excellent presentation at our Renal Grand Rounds today by Dr. Charles O’Neill of Emory University, regarding the process of pathologic calcification in CKD/ESRD patients. One of the points I took away from this talk is that…
Since I’m presently trying to make it through the most recent ish of NephSAP–their first-ever issue of “Interventional Nephrology”–I’ll do another access-related post. A “secondary AV fistula” refers to a fistula created after a pre-existing graft or fistula…
The “Fistula First” initiative, which has as its goal the increase in % of dialysis patients who dialyze via an AV fistula rather than an AV graft or catheter, has been a controversial initiative. Although few would debate…
Mutations in the CFTR gene are responsible for cystic fibrosis. CFTR encodes a chloride transporter which in addition to its being expressed in the lungs and pancreas, is also found in the kidney. As I have blogged about previously,…
“Osmotic nephrosis” is a term which describes a common form of renal tubular injury in response to hyperosmolar substances. It is especially relevant to iv contrast nephropathy, and was first observed in animals and human patients infused with…
One of the major medical advances over the past few decades has been the success of stem cell transplants, which serves as a potential cure for many patients with previously untreatable leukemias and lymphomas. With the expanded use…