Anti-Nephrin Antibodies in Minimal Change Disease
Approach to the Patient with Peritoneal Dialysis Catheter Dysfunction- Part 1
Want to write a case report? RFN has you covered with a list of journals to choose from
Have a Nephrology Question? There Might Be A #Tweetorial For That!
Conferences, Courses, & Grants
FOAMed
Interventional Nephrology Series
Focus on Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Nephrology (POCUN) Series
Kidney Biopsy of the Month Series
Serum Free Light Chain Assay
The dilemma: there are a subset of patients with some type of paraproteinemia–e.g., light chain deposition disease or amyloidosis, for instance–which are NEGATIVE by SPEP & UPEP. When there is renal involvement, the diagnosis can potentially be made…
Speaking of Ethylene Glycol Poisoning…
If you’ve never heard the biochemical sleuthwork involved in the legal case of Patricia Stallings, it’s definitely worth reading about: a good summary of the case can be found here. Briefly, it involves a St. Louis-area woman who,…
Wood’s Lamp Trick for Diagnosing Ethylene Glycol Toxicity
One of the more common (and potentially successful) suicide attempts is to drink a bunch of antifreeze, which contains ethylene glycol. As we all know, this is typically diagnosed by characteristic lab abnormalities: patients present initially with an…
Macroglossia
As you may recall, macroglossia (an enlarged tongue) is one of the many manifestations of amyloidosis, the systemic disorder in which a particular protein is deposited as Congo-red positive aggregations. You may also recall that amyloidosis can be…
Gestational Diabetes Insipidus
Changes in the regulation of serum osmolarity is just one of the many chances that occurs during the normal physiologic response to pregnancy. Beginning with the first trimester, the plasma osmolarity level, serum Na, and osmolarity thresholds for…
Minimizing risk of infertility in cytoxan-treated patients
One of the major side effects of cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan) in both men and women is gonadal failure and resultant infertility. While there is markedly less risk with the doses typically used for the treatment of glomerular disease than,…
Structure & Function of Other Animals’ Kidneys
Here’s a very brief overview of the kidneys of animals (other than humans). All vertebrates have kidneys and the functional unit of the kidney in all species is the nephron. Freshwater fish–like the zebrafish–have a kidney which is kind…
Aggrenox for Maintaining AV Graft Patency?
A very significant percentages of ESRD patient admissions derive from clotted dialysis access–the “lifeline” dialysis patients require in order to survive on dialysis. Any maneuver or treatment which is successful in preventing, or even delaying, access thrombosis would…
5-Oxoprolinuria as a Cause for Metabolic Acidosis
One of the rare (but potentially underdiagnosed) causes of anion gap metabolic acidosis is acquired 5-oxoprolinuria due to excessive Tylenol ingestion. To explain how this works, you need to familiarize yourself briefly with the gamma-glutamyl cycle, a series…
Nature versus Nurture in Deceased Donor Kidney Transplant Pairs
A recent paper in the most recent issue of JASN by Louvar et al asks the “nature versus nurture” question of deceased donor kidney transplants. Using data from the US Renal Data System (USRDS), the investigators looked at…