Nice debate on ASN Transplant Community about the use of IVIG for BK nephropathy. Personally, I have used IVIG in a handful of patients with refractory BK nephropathy in the past. However, I have convinced myself that there…
A short article was recently written on Washington Post by a medical student who donated a kidney at age 18 to his brother’s stepfather and now regrets it. Worth a reading (link here). He questioned the informed consent…
Patient is a 37-year-old female with cystic fibrosis, recurrent nephrolithiasis who presents to clinic with asymptomatic bilateral kidney stones (8mm on right; 2mm on left) on imaging. What type of stone and why cystic fibrosis (CF) is associated…
I was quite excited to see the development of novel agents to help us manage hyperkalemia in our kidney patients in place of kayexalate, which is extremely unpleasant for patients, is associated with diarrhea and have reported severe…
Renal transplantation reduces mortality in elderly patients by more than 50%, however, challenges are magnified in elderly renal transplant recipients (RTR) when managing their pharmacotherapy regimen. Aging is associated with changes in several pharmacokinetics parameters including absorption, distribution, metabolism,…
We had an interesting discussion yesterday about a young patient with ESRD secondary to diabetic nephropathy who was recently initiated on hemodialysis and reported headaches, chest heaviness and shortness of breath during dialysis sessions associated with a rise…
The past two weeks have been exciting for the field of regenerative medicine in nephrology. Two papers demonstrated the feasibility of developing kidney cells from human pluripotent stem cells. One from the USA by Dr Joseph Bonventre’s group…
For severe or refractory rejections, thymoglobulin/ATG is commonly employed in combination with steroids and B-cell targeted therapies when indicated. However, alemtuzumab could be more effective then thymoglobulin since it depletes not only T cells but also memory B…
KDPI (kidney donor profile index) is a numerical measure that combines ten variables about a donor, including clinical parameters and demographics, to express the quality of the donor kidneys relative to other donors. It has been reported by…
A 31 year-old healthy male donated his kidney to his mother who had IgA nephropathy. Prior to donation, his creatinine was 1.08 mg/dl. One year after donation, his creatinine is 1.59 mg/dL. He was seeing in clinic and…
