Fifty Shades: ambivalence about birth control in an erotic bestseller and its cultural implications.

The Fifty Shades trilogy by E.L. James has taken the world by storm and become a cultural phenomenon.

Renal amyloidosis associated with a novel sequence variant of gelsolin.

We present a case of a 75-year-old woman who presented with progressive kidney failure. Kidney biopsy performed to determine the cause of kidney failure showed amyloidosis of undetermined type. Laser microdissection of the Congo Red-positive glomeruli followed by mass spectrometry studies showed a large number of spectra matching apolipoprotein E, serum amyloid P component, and gelsolin, consistent with a diagnosis of gelsolin-associated renal amyloidosis.

Renal disease from excess uric acid.

Excess uric acid or urate deposition is a common element in three different forms of renal disease: acute uric acid nephropathy, chronic urate nephropathy, and uric acid nephrolithiasis. Clinical features vary with each form. Therapy is directed at decreasing production of uric acid, increasing its solubility, or both.

The importance of renal net acid excretion as a determinant of fasting urinary calcium excretion.

To evaluate the effects of changing rates of fixed acid production on fasting urine Ca/creatinine, we studied five healthy men fed constant diets during control conditions (serum HCO3 27.3 +/- 2.6 SD mEq/liter and blood H+ 40.