I had always assumed that the “Bence-Jones” protein–essentially, the demonstration of monoclonal light chains on urine protein electropheresis (UPEP)–was named after two doctors, Bence & Jones. However I recently found out that actually it was named after a…
Traditionally surgeons have relied on a well-honed abdominal exam, combined with abdominal imaging usually in the form of an iv-contrast CT scan, to make the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. Nevertheless, there remain significant instances of “false negatives” (usually…
Testing for the presence of urine eosinophils is often performed when the diagnosis of acute interstitial nephritis is suspected. The landmark paper touting the use of this test is a 1986 New England Journal of Medicine article by…
We’re all taught that looking for dysmorphic red blood cells on urinalysis is a useful marker of glomerular hematuria. But how do we define “dysmorphic”? And how was this association originally studied? One landmark paper was this 1991…
One of the easier aspects to taking an examination like the boards is pattern recognition: there are certain images or associations that should be immediate triggers for a particular diagnosis. One good example of this is a knowledge…
This month’s Kidney International features an interesting report by Vaidya et al which reports on the development of a potentially useful dipstick test able to detect urinary Kim-1, a promising new biomarker for acute kidney injury. As we…
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…
An article by van de Velde et al in this month’s JASN describes the results of the Prevention of Renal and Vascular End-stage Disease (PREVEND) study, a cohort study in which the ability to predict the need for…
The loin pain-hematuria syndrome occurs when glomerular hematuria occurs in conjunction with renal colic, in the absence of glomerulonephritis or a worsening of renal function. It is not a common disorder, though appears to be more common in…
Is it a good idea to screen the pediatric population at-large for hematuria and proteinuria? This is a controversial topic, as generally speaking isolated hematuria or isolated proteinuria are almost always benign findings in pediatric populations, and…
