Systemic mastocytosis presenting with acute oliguric renal failure: report of a case and review of the literature.

A 61-year old African-American woman presented with abdominal pain, tender splenomegaly, anemia, and renal insufficiency. Bone marrow biopsy demonstrated systemic mastocytosis. She was treated with mediator-specific therapy and imatinib, but her renal and hepatic function deteriorated and she required maintenance hemodialysis.

Spontaneous retroperitoneal hemorrhage due to acquired cystic kidney disease.

A patient with end-stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis developed sudden severe abdominal pain and distension. He suffered a decline in his hematocrit and subsequent abdominal imaging revealed a large left-sided retroperitoneal hemorrhage in the setting of atrophic, severely cystic kidneys. He underwent selective left renal artery angiography and embolization due to continued hemorrhage with stabilization in his condition.

Movement of vault particles visualized by GFP-tagged major vault protein.

Vaults are abundant large ribonucleoprotein particles. They frequently colocalize with microtubules and accumulate in filamentous actin-rich lamellipodia. To examine the movement of vaults in living cells, a chimera between the green fluorescent protein and the major vault protein was created.