An Environmental Scan of Canadian Kidney Transplant Programs for the Management of Patients With Graft Failure: A Research Letter.

Background: Kidney transplant recipients with graft failure (KTR-GF) and those with a failing graft are an increasingly prevalent group of patients. Their clinical management is complex, and outcomes are worse than transplant naïve patients on dialysis. In 2023, the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) organization reported findings from a controversies conference and identified several clinical practice priorities for KTR-GF.

Involving Patient Partners in the KRESCENT Peer Review: Intent, Process, Challenges, and Opportunities.

Purpose Of Review: The Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training (KRESCENT) is a national Canadian training program for kidney scientists, funded by the Kidney Foundation of Canada (KFOC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Canadian Society of Nephrology (CSN). We describe our first year of incorporating patient partners into a scientific peer-review committee, the 2017 committee to select senior research trainees and early-career kidney researchers for funding and training, in the hope that it will be helpful to others who wish to integrate the perspective of people with lived experience into the peer-review process.

Sources Of Information: Other peer-review committees, websites, journal articles, patient partners, Kidney Foundation of Canada Research Council, Canadians Seeking Solutions and Innovations to Overcome Chronic Kidney Disease (Can-SOLVE CKD) Patient Council, participants in the 2017 Kidney Foundation of Canada KRESCENT peer-review panel.

Assessment and validation of prognostic models for poor functional recovery 12 months after whiplash injury: a multicentre inception cohort study.

Uncertainty surrounds prognostic factors after whiplash injury. Previously we identified a prognostic model for 6-month pain-related disability in a cohort of 80 participants with acute whiplash. Predictors included initial disability, older age, decreased cold pain thresholds, decreased neck rotation movement, posttraumatic stress symptoms and decreased sympathetic vasoconstriction.

Assessment of the paraspinal muscles of subjects presenting an idiopathic scoliosis: an EMG pilot study.

Background: It is known that the back muscles of scoliotic subjects present abnormalities in their fiber type composition. Some researchers have hypothesized that abnormal fiber composition can lead to paraspinal muscle dysfunction such as poor neuromuscular efficiency and muscle fatigue. EMG parameters were used to evaluate these impairments.

The effects of transforming growth factor-beta neutralization on postburn humoral immunity.

Background: Burn injury induces immunosuppression, which is associated with an increased susceptibility to infection. Our laboratory has demonstrated that burn injury also impairs humoral immunity. We reported that burn injury enhanced expression of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) mRNA and that exogenous TGF-beta further impaired humoral immunity.