Cardiovascular changes in young renal failure patients

Progresses in medical care of severe kidney disease and congenital anomalies of kidney and urinary tract make it possible for a higher percentage of young renal failure patients to survive and enter adulthood. There is thus an increasing need to focus on the long-term effects of severely reduced kidney function early in life. Cardiovascular changes are known to contribute considerably in adulthood to the severe complications of renal failure. In young chronic kidney disease patients, there is limited knowledge of subclinical cardiovascular disease. In this issue of Clinical Kidney Journal, Lalayiannis et al. describe significant structural and functional cardiovascular changes in a young cohort of kidney failure patients with glomerular filtration rate <30 mL/min/1.73 m2. Among the 100 patients between 5 and 30 years of age included in the study, 84 presented with signs of cardiovascular disease. There is a need for long-term follow-up data on cardiovascular consequences of renal failure early in life and evaluation of prophylactic and therapeutic measures that can ameliorate the overall prognosis for these patients. We look forward to planned future long-term data from this cohort as well as increased focus in general on cardiovascular changes in young renal failure patients.publishedVersio

Paradigmatic well posedness in some generalized characteristic Cauchy problems

By means of convenient regularization for an ill posed Cauchy problem, we deï¬ne an associated generalized problem and discuss the conditions for the solvability of it. To illustrate this, starting from the semilinear unidirectional wave equation with data given on a characteristic curve, we show existence and uniqueness of the solution.

A subset of metzincins and related genes constitutes a marker of human solid organ fibrosis

Metzincins and functionally related genes play important roles in extracellular matrix remodeling both in healthy and fibrotic conditions. We recently presented a transcriptomic classifier consisting of 19 metzincins and related genes (MARGS) discriminating biopsies from renal transplant patients with or without interstitial fibrosis/tubular atrophy (IF/TA) by virtue of gene expression measurement (Roedder et al., Am J Transplant 9:517-526, 2009). Here we demonstrate that the same algorithm has diagnostic value in non-transplant solid organ fibrosis. We used publically available microarray datasets of 325 human heart, liver, lung, kidney cortex, and pancreas microarray samples (265 with fibrosis, 60 healthy controls). Expression of nine commonly differentially expressed genes was confirmed by TaqMan low-density arrays (Applied Biosystems, USA) in 50 independent archival tissue specimens with matched histological diagnoses to microarray patients. In separate and in combined, integrated microarray data analyses of five datasets with 325 samples, the previously published MARGS classifier for renal post-transplant IF/TA had a mean AUC of 87% and 82%, respectively. These data demonstrate that the MARGS gene panel classifier not only discriminates IF/TA from normal renal transplant tissue, but also classifies solid organ fibrotic conditions of human pancreas, liver, heart, kidney, and lung tissue samples with high specificity and accuracy, suggesting that the MARGS classifier is a cross-platform, cross-organ classifier of fibrotic conditions of different etiologies when compared to normal tissu

Towards an Analysis of Study Habits of University Students

This paper looks at the study workload for a sample of undergraduate students during 30 min intervals over 7x24 hours. Students at the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet in Denmark and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogot&aacute;, Colombia, took part in the experiment, which focused on physics and mathematics students. Detailed data was obtained for the total study workload, the study workload during the day and during the week, the different study activities, and the differences in workload between different students. Significant differences are found between the study practices of the students at the two institutions. Further work is required to make adjustments to the teaching and learning programmes

Congenital Transmission of Chagas Disease in Latin American Immigrants in Switzerland

International migration has changed the epidemiologic patterns of Chagas disease. Recently, 2 cases of Chagas disease transmitted from Latin American women to their newborns were diagnosed in Geneva, Switzerland. A retrospective study to detect Chagas disease showed a prevalence of 9.7% among 72 Latin American women tested during pregnancy in Switzerland

Metzincins and related genes in experimental renal ageing: towards a unifying fibrosis classifier across species

Background We have previously described a transcriptomic classifier consisting of metzincins and related genes (MARGS) discriminating kidneys and other organs with or without fibrosis from human biopsies. We now apply our MARGS-based algorithm to a rat model of age-associated interstitial renal fibrosis. Methods Untreated Fisher 344 rats (n = 76) were sacrificed between 2 to 104 weeks of age. For gene expression studies, we used single colour (Cy3) Agilent Whole Rat Genome 4 × 44k microarrays; 4-5 animals of each sex were profiled at each of the following ages: 2, 5, 6, 8, 15, 21, 78 and 104 weeks. Intensity data were subjected to variance stabilization (www.Partek.com). Data were analysed with ANOVA and other statistical methods. Results Sixty MARGS were differentially expressed across age groups. More MARGS were differentially expressed in older males than in older females. Principal component analysis showed gene expression induced segregation of age groups by sex from 6 to 104 weeks of age. The expression level of MMP7 correlated best with fibrosis grade. Severity of fibrosis was determined in 20 animals at 78 and 104 weeks of age. Expression values of 15 of 19 genes of the original classifier present on the Agilent array, in conjunction with linear discriminant analysis, was sufficient to correctly classify these 20 samples into non-fibrosis and fibrosis. Overrepresentation of MMP2 protein and CD44 protein in fibrosis was confirmed by immunofluorescence. Conclusions Based on these results and our previous work, the MARGS classifier represents a cross-organ and cross-species classifier of fibrosis irrespective of aetiology. This finding provides evidence for a common pathway leading to fibrosis and will help to design a PCR-based clinical tes