The role of bioimpedance analysis in overweight and obese patients with acute heart failure: a pilot study.

Aims: Residual congestion at the time of hospital discharge is an important readmission risk factor, and its detection with physical examination and usual diagnostic techniques have strong limitations in overweight and obese patients. New tools like bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) could help to determine when euvolaemia is reached. The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of BIA in management of heart failure (HF) in overweight and obese patients.

Design and optimization strategies for the development of new drugs that treat chronic kidney disease.

: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by increased risks of progression to end-stage kidney disease requiring dialysis and cardiovascular mortality, predicted to be among the five top causes of death by 2040. Only the design and optimization of novel strategies to develop new drugs to treat CKD will contain this trend. Current therapy for CKD includes nonspecific therapy targeting proteinuria and/or hypertension and cause-specific therapies for diabetic kidney disease, autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, glomerulonephritides, Fabry nephropathy, hemolytic uremic syndrome and others.

MYH9-related disease: it does exist, may be more frequent than you think and requires specific therapy.

In this issue of , Tabibzadeh report one of the largest series of patients with mutations and kidney disease. The cardinal manifestation of MYH9-related disease is thrombocytopenia with giant platelets. The population frequency of pathogenic mutations may be at least 1 in 20 000.