Cefazolin in chronic hemodialysis patients: a safe, effective alternative to vancomycin.

Vancomycin use is common in hemodialysis patients, due in part to the ease of dosing, but can lead to the development of resistant organisms, including vancomycin-resistant enterococcus. Alternate antibiotics may be equally effective and allow similar dosing in the chronic hemodialysis population. A retrospective review of culture results from a 217-patient, non-hospital-based outpatient hemodialysis center was performed over a 7-month period.

Nephritogenic potential of sheep antibodies against glomerular basement membrane laminin in the rat.

Antilaminin antibodies have been shown to bind to laminin within the glomerular basement membrane (GBM) and mesangium of experimental animals but have induced little or no glomerular injury. We used a sheep antiserum to murine Englebreth-Holm-Swarm sarcoma laminin (sheep antilaminin) to further study the potential of antilaminin antibodies to cause glomerular injury. Intravenous injections of sheep antilaminin into rats produced intense linear GBM deposits of sheep IgG but consistently failed to induce heterologous phase proteinuria as previously shown.

Complement-induced glomerular epithelial cell injury. Role of the membrane attack complex in rat membranous nephropathy.

In passive Heymann nephritis (PHN) in rats, antibody (anti-Fx1A) reacts in situ with a glomerular epithelial antigen and induces complement (C)-mediated cell-independent proteinuria. To assess the role of the membrane attack complex (MAC), we determined the need for C8 in the pathogenesis of proteinuria in an autologous-phase model of PHN. Isolated rat kidneys, containing nonnephritogenic, non-C-fixing gamma 2 sheep anti-Fx1A (planted antigen), when perfused in vitro with C-fixing guinea pig anti-sheep IgG and a source of C (fresh human plasma 50% vol/vol in buffer containing bovine serum albumin), developed marked proteinuria after 20 min (0.

Antibody, antigen, and glomerular capillary wall charge interactions: influence of antigen location on in situ immune complex formation.

These studies examined the charge interactions between the glomerular capillary wall, antibody and antigen at different sites in the glomerulus. Sheep IgG was separated into differently charged subclasses and immunologically placed in one of two glomerular locations (subepithelial or subendothelial) to serve as planted antigen. Single kidneys with planted antigen were transplanted into uninephrectomized recipients that received affinity-purified, cationic and anionic rat anti-sheep IgG labelled with 125I and 131I, respectively.