Hope everybody is having a happy holiday season–even those nephrology fellows (not myself, fortunately) who are required to staff the dialysis unit in lieu of spending time with family and friends. An unusual cause of acute kidney injury…
It took me until just recently to realize this, but the Tamm-Horsfall protein and uromodulin are two names for the same gene. As we all know, Tamm-Horsfall protein (discovered by Tamm and Horsfall in 1950) is the…
The key aspect of the workup for a potential kidney transplant donor is ensuring that donation does not result in future health problems for the donor. For the most part, this boils down to determining whether or not…
One of the earliest time-saving tricks I learned as a Nephrology fellow was to always ask the covering housestaff to have a specimen of piping hot urine waiting for me at the time of the initial consult: I…
Did you know that there are tiny vesicles in your pee? A 2004 PNAS article by Pisitkun et al demonstrates that this is the case; the vesicles are secreted by tubular epithelial cells at the apical surface and…
Here’s a case I saw on the consult service last week which demonstrates the utility of examining the urine sediment yourself. The clinical scenario: a 50 year-old male with a history of hepatitis C liver disease who was…
