Background: IgA nephropathy, a frequent cause of endstage renal disease, is an autoimmune disease wherein immune complexes consisting of IgA1 with galactose-deficient O -glycans (autoantigen) and anti-glycan autoantibodies deposit in glomeruli and induce renal injury. Multiple genetic loci associated with disease risk have been identified. The prevalence of risk alleles varies geographically: i...

Elderly patients and their caregivers are faced with a wide variety of complex treatment decisions ranging from the risks and benefits of antihypertensive therapy to the decision to pursue renal replacement therapy versus palliative care. There is a great deal of heterogeneity in health status among elderly patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and endstage kidney disease (ESKD), and age a...

Renal involvement in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), dysproteinemias, and certain rheumatic diseases, namely rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren’s syndrome, and scleroderma (systemic sclerosis), is discussed. SLE is a systemic autoimmune disease that can lead to disease manifestations in almost every organ. SLE is characterized by the formation of a wide array of autoantibodies mainly directed ag...

BACKGROUND Anemia in end stage renal disease is attributed to impaired erythrocyte formation due to erythropoietin and iron deficiency. On the other hand, end stage renal disease enhances eryptosis, the suicidal erythrocyte death characterized by cell shrinkage and phosphatidylserine-exposure at the erythrocyte surface. Eryptosis may be triggered by increase of cytosolic Ca(2+)-activity ([Ca(2+...

Remarkable advances have been made with prolonged antihypertensive therapy in reversing cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Deaths from stroke have been reduced by 70% and from coronary heart disease by 35%. In contrast, endstage renal disease resulting from hypertension continues to increase. The explanations for this seeming paradox remain unresolved even though experimental models have d...

Antiphospholipid syndrome is an acquired thrombophilia characterized by venous or artery thrombosis sometimes accompanied by thrombocytopenia in the presence of anti-phospholipid antibodies. The 14th International Antiphos-pholipid Antibodies Congress was combined with the 4th Latin American Congress on Autoimmunity and took place in Rio de Janeiro in September 2013. In this special issue we ha...

IgA anti-beta-2-glycoprotein I (aB2GPI) antibodies have been related to vascular pathology in the general population and mainly in hemodialyzed patients (prevalence 33%) in whom an elevated incidence of thrombosis and mortality is found. In this paper we have studied the presence of IgA aB2GPI antibodies at pretransplant and their evolution after transplantation with a cross-sectional-based fol...

More than 100 000 Americans were diagnosed with endstage renal disease (ESRD) and initiated renal replacement therapy in 2003. Diabetes mellitus (DM) was the etiology of ESRD in nearly one half (44.2%) of these incident cases. Overall, 324 826 Americans received renal replacement therapy in 2003 at a cost of more than $27.3 billion.1 Diabetic subjects are not at equal risk for developing progre...