The concept of chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD) does not appear to fulfil the requirements for a syndrome at first glance, but its definition has brought some clear-cut benefits for clinicians and patients, including wider and more complex diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to the management of this challenging set of issues. Admittedly, not all components of CKD-MBD ar...

BACKGROUND KDOQI guidelines recommend preparation for renal replacement therapy (RRT) once stage 4 chronic kidney disease (CKD) is reached. Recent studies conducted in the general population and in patients referred to nephrologists have shown that CKD patients, especially the elderly, are much more likely to die than to reach RRT. We investigated whether futile preparation for RRT was performe...

The article “Chronic Kidney Disease in sub-Saharan Africa: Hypothesis for research demand” from Dr. Biruck published in this issue of the AAM put in the light many facts already very well known in the community of nephrologists all over the world.[1-4] The everyday problems regarding the nephrological practice in the developing countries such as lack of certified nephrologists (“brain drain”), ...

BACKGROUND The combination of HIV infection and diabetes mellitus (DM) represents a collision of two chronic conditions. Both HIV and DM increase the risk of developing tuberculosis (TB). Health resources in developing countries are already under strain as a result of the TB epidemic and poor diabetic control would further worsen this epidemic. Optimal diabetic control provides one avenue of cu...

OBJECTIVE Vitamin K (VK) dependent carboxylation of matrix Gla protein (MGP) protects the macrocirculation against calcification. Whether glomerular filtration (GFR), a renal microvascular trait, is related to circulating desphospho-uncarboxylated MGP (dp-ucMGP) has not been explored before. We therefore investigated our hypothesis in our Flemish Study on Environment, Genes and Health Outcomes ...

G FR is the accepted metric for evaluating renal function but measuring it directly (mGFR) can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly. The constant infusion method using inulin as the filtration marker, introduced in 1934 by Richards and Smith (1), has undergone many revisions that have now made mGFR easier to perform, although not widely available (2,3). A simple, reliable, unbiased, precis...

In 2003, the US-based KDOQI (Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative) group published Clinical Practice Guidelines for Managing Dyslipidemias in Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). In the absence of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), ATP III Guidelines (Adult Treatment Panel III) were considered to be generally applicable to patients with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) Z15 ml/min/ 1...

In their landmark 1996 paper in JAMA, Hirth and colleagues reported that most patients in the United States with permanent vascular access were undergoing dialysis via a prosthetic graft rather than an autogenous fistula, despite known higher rates of infection and thrombosis associated with grafts.1 These authors also reported large regional differences in rates of graft use—ranging from 23% o...

L‐carnitine (free carnitine) transports cytosolic long‐chain fatty acids as acylcarnitines across the inner mitochondrial membrane for β‐oxidation and subsequent ATP production in the mitochondria. The endogenous carnitine pool comprises free L-carnitine as well as short-, mediumand long-chain fatty acid esters (acyl-carnitines) and depends on absorption of L-carnitine from dietary sources, end...

Abstract Background and Aims The use of central venous catheters as hemodialysis (HD) vascular access is a leading contributor to high rate bloodstream infection. Our dialysis unit in China has followed the National Infection Control Policy for HD well developed its own specific catheter care protocol using Centre Disease Prevention (CDC) guidelines template. By doing so, our achieved tunneled ...