Necrotizing enterovirus myositis in a pediatric renal transplant recipient.

Background: Enteroviruses can cause severe infections, including viral myocarditis, meningitis, acute flaccid myelitis, and viral myositis.

Methods/results: We report a 3-year-old female renal transplant recipient who presented to a tertiary care hospital with elevated serum liver aminotransferases and subsequently developed proximal muscle pain, weakness, and respiratory distress during the first week of hospitalization. Imaging of the lower extremities revealed diffuse myositis of the proximal thigh and pelvic muscles.

Hypertension in Children and Adolescents: A Review of Recent Guidelines.

Pediatric hypertension (HTN) is a growing problem worldwide that can be attributed to various risk factors, including the upward trend in obesity and poor lifestyle choices. Pediatric HTN will eventually lead to adult HTN and cardiovascular disease. There is concern that HTN in children and adolescents is often underdiagnosed.

Risk Behaviors in Teens with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Study from the Midwest Pediatric Nephrology Consortium.

Introduction: There is a paucity of information about risk behaviors in adolescents with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We designed this study to assess the prevalence of risk behaviors among teens with CKD in the United States and to investigate any associations between risk behavior and patient or disease characteristics.

Methods: After informed consent, adolescents with CKD completed an anonymous, confidential, electronic web-based questionnaire to measure risk behaviors within five domains: sex, teen driving, alcohol and tobacco consumption, illicit drug use, and depression-related risk behavior.

Kidney biopsy findings in children with sickle cell disease: a Midwest Pediatric Nephrology Consortium study.

Background: Renal damage is a progressive complication of sickle cell disease (SCD). Microalbuminuria is common in children with SCD, while a smaller number of children have more severe renal manifestations necessitating kidney biopsy. There is limited information on renal biopsy findings in children with SCD and subsequent management and outcome.

Idiopathic membranous nephropathy in children treated with rituximab: report of two cases.

Background: Idiopathic membranous nephropathy is an uncommon cause of nephrotic syndrome in children and can present treatment challenges. The current treatment options of steroids and cyclophosphamide, cyclosporine, or mycophenolate require prolonged treatment durations and the associated side effects may result in nonadherence in children, especially in adolescents.

Case-diagnosis: We report two adolescent patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy with nephrotic range proteinuria and elevated anti-phospholipase A2 receptor levels who did not achieve remission with steroids and were later treated with rituximab.

Management of blood pressure in children.

Purpose Of Review: This review summarizes recent insights into the epidemiology of primary hypertension in children, with emphasis on the most important risk factors for the development of hypertension, and also updates current options for treating primary hypertension in children.

Recent Findings: There is growing evidence that the prevalence of hypertension has increased over the past decade and that the epidemic of obesity has played a key role in the increase of blood pressure (BP) in the USA and abroad. Recent studies have shown that in addition to obesity, environmental factors such as second-hand smoking and sedentary lifestyle are important in development of hypertension even in preschool age children.

Early cardiac dysfunction in pediatric patients on maintenance dialysis and post kidney transplant.

Background: Children with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) frequently develop left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy. The extent of hypertrophy that results in cardiac dysfunction is unknown. Systolic function, routinely determined by ejection fraction (EF), is usually preserved in these patients.