BACKGROUND Elderly individuals need a host of diagnostic procedures and therapeutic interventions to take care of ailments. This prospective study was carried out to determine the magnitude of treatment-related acute renal failure (ARF) in the elderly in a hospital setting, to know about pathogenetic factors and to study the factors that could predict an adverse outcome. METHODS All elderly p...

ARF GAP1, a 415-amino acid GTPase activating protein (GAP) for ADP-ribosylation factor (ARF) contains an amino-terminal 115-amino acid catalytic domain and no other recognizable features. Amino acids 203-334 of ARF GAP1 were sufficient to target a GFP-fusion protein to Golgi membranes in vivo. When overexpressed in COS-1 cells, this protein domain inhibited protein transport between the ER and ...

Acute renal failure (ARF) is the abrupt loss of renal function sufficient to decrease urinary elimination of nitrogenous waste (urea nitrogen and creatinine). Although there is consensus about this general definition, few agree on the magnitude of the rise in serum eneatinine necessary to ascribe a diagnosis of ARF (1,2). These differences in definition plus variances in methods of patient accr...

Having recently described the injurious role of caspase-1-mediated production of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-18 in ischemic acute renal failure (ARF), we report here on the effect of the newly developed caspase inhibitor Quinoline-Val-Asp(Ome)-CH(2)-OPH (OPH-001) on caspase-1, IL-18, neutrophil infiltration, and renal function in ischemic ARF. C57BL/6 mice with ischemic ARF treated with OPH...

As an essential nucleolar protein for ribosomal assembly and protein production, nucleolar GTPase nucleostemin (NS) is often highly expressed in actively proliferative cells, including stem cells and cancer cells, and therefore thought to play an oncogenic role in various types of human cancers [1]. However, given the heterogeneity of cancer cells, imbalanced expression of NS could trigger dist...

BACKGROUND Early detection of acute tubular necrosis (ATN) could permit implementation of salvage therapies and improve patient outcomes in acute renal failure (ARF). The utility of single and combined measurements of urinary tubular enzymes in predicting ARF in critically ill patients has not been evaluated using the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) plot method. METHODS In this prospe...

Activation of phospholipase D1 (PLD1) by Arf has been implicated in vesicle transport and membrane trafficking. PLD1 has also been shown to be associated with the small GTPase RalA, which functions downstream from Ras in a Ras-RalA GTPase cascade that facilitates intracellular signal transduction. Although PLD1 associates directly with RalA, RalA has no effect upon the activity of PLD1. However...

In agreement with recent studies showing a deleterious effect of growth hormone treatment in critically ill patients, preliminary data showed that insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) administration increased the mortality rate of rats with ischemic acute renal failure (ARF). The present study was designed to investigate the mechanism responsible for this unexpected effect. Male rats with ische...

cates the course of hospitalized patients. The incidence of hospital-acquired ARF is between 4.9% and 7%.1,2 ARF occurs commonly in the intensive care unit, with an incidence up to 20% in this setting.3 In contrast, the incidence of communityacquired ARF is 0.9%.4 Despite technical advances in the management of ARF over the past 50 years, mortality rates remain unchanged at 50%.5 Hospital-based...

Acute renal failure (ARF) is a common disease affecting approximately 5% of all hospitalized patients and 10–30% of the patients in intensive care units. The mortality rate is still very high (above 50%), despite advances in the management of critically ill patients and in the renal replacement therapies. Pre-existing or hospital-acquired malnutrition is an important factor contributing to high...