Nephrology

Podocyte cell lines are becoming widely used in renal research. This article gives a detailed description of the production and culture of immortalized podocyte cell lines. Furthermore, these methods can be applied to essentially any cell type, providing a practical approach to study the interactions of renal cell types in vitro.

A longitudinal cohort study investigating the association between the metabolic syndrome and incident CKD in a Chinese population. The presence of the metabolic syndrome was associated with s significant risk of developing CKD (HR 1.42 95% CI 1.03–1.73).

This manuscript presents country-specific data that will inform discussions about health-care provision in end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in the Australian setting. The authors concluded that as the majority of Australian adolescents and young adults (AYA) with ESKD live in the capital cities, there may be an opportunity to establish centralized services designed to cater for the needs of AYA patients.

In this systematic review of randomized controlled trials, the authors show that in dialysis patients, statins affect the chronic inflammation status favourably as reflected by reduction in serum CRP and hs-CRP levels, but do not improve the nutrition status as reflected by serum albumin.

This paper reports elevated expressions of PTHrP and BMP-2/Cbfa1 in calcified vessel walls of patients on haemodialysis. Experimentally, exogenous rhPTHrP-1–34 increased intracellular calcium deposition in aortic smooth muscle cells and activated BMP-2/Cbfa1, with reduction by silencing PTHrP. Therefore PTHrP may be involved in vascular calcification by activating the BMP-2/Cbfa1 signalling pathway.

This study demonstrates factors associated with cerebral white matter hyperintensities (WMH) on MRI in a relatively large cohort of HD patients. Among the risk factors that the authors described, female gender is a new finding as a risk factor of WMH.

This detailed study examined patients undergoing haemodialysis and compared them with a control group receiving peritoneal dialysis. They demonstrated that one in five dialysis patients has a patent foramen ovale, that microemboli are formed in fistulae during dialysis, but did not demonstrate any evidence of cerebral emboli.

The possible links between vitamin D, immune function and atherosclerosis are explored in this paper. Using intima-media thickness as an index of vascular disease, significant associations were found with low levels of vitamin D, hsCRP and the frequency of T lymphocyte subsets. These findings suggest that the link between vitamin D and vascular disease in chronic renal failure might involve the immune system.

Obesity is an increasingly common problem in our end-stage kidney disease populations. This paper analysed a retrospective cohort of 508 adult patients who received primary kidney grafts at a single centre. Overall, 62% of transplant recipients had a body mass index (BMI) above 25 kg/m² at transplant. Higher BMI was associated with an increased risk of wound complications (P < 0.001), early nephrectomy (P = 0.002) and delayed graft function (P = 0.03), but not associated with surgical or urological complications, or intensive care unit admission.