Risk identification in haemodialysis patients by appropriate body composition assessment.

Introduction: Circumstances such as gender, age, diabetes mellitus (DM) and renal failure impact on the body composition of patients. However, we use nutritional parameters such as lean and fat tissue with reference values from healthy subjects to assess the nutritional status of haemodialysis (HD) patients.

Aims: To analyse body composition by bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) of 6395 HD patients in order to obtain reference values of lean tissue index (LTI) and fat tissue index (FTI) from HD patients; and to confirm its validity by showing that those patients with LTI below the 10th percentile calculated for their group have greatest risk of death.

On-line hemodiafiltration reduces the proinflammatory CD14+CD16+ monocyte-derived dendritic cells: A prospective, crossover study.

It is not known whether high convective transport may have a role in modulating the chronic inflammation of hemodialysis (HD) patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of on-line hemodiafiltration (OL-HDF) on proinflammatory peripheral monocytes: Percentage of CD14+CD16+ cells and their telomere length and spontaneous or bacterial DNA-induced production of cytokines (TNF-alpha and IL-6). In a prospective, crossover study, 31 patients who were on high-flux HD (HF-HD) were evaluated.

Microinflammation in hemodialysis is related to a preactivated subset of monocytes.

Increased percentage of monocytes with low CD14 expression and that co-express CD16 (CD14+/CD16+) have been reported in hemodialysis (HD) patients. We sought to determine whether CD14+/CD16+ monocytes in HD therapy are sensibilized cells to a proinflammatory activity. Cells from 32 HD patients, and from 9 Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), 9 individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1- and 15 healthy controls were studied.

Presence of a failed kidney transplant in patients who are on hemodialysis is associated with chronic inflammatory state and erythropoietin resistance.

Patients returning to hemodialysis (HD) after failure of their kidney transplant suffer from high morbidity and mortality rates. It is common practice to keep failed kidney transplants in place. It is not known if these failed kidney transplants induce an inflammatory state that contributes to morbidity and mortality.

Parathyroidectomy: whom and when?

Hyperparathyroidism (HPT) is common in patients on dialysis, and parathyroidectomy (PTx) is often required. We present a retrospective, descriptive analysis of data corresponding to 148 patients on dialysis undergoing PTx due to severe refractory HPT (PTH 1401 +/- 497 pg/mL, Ca 10.6 +/- 0.