Kidney involvement in a Wegener granulomatosis case.

Wegener Granulomatosis is a systemic Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Autoantibody-associated Vasculitis, affecting small-to-medium vessels. Clinical presentation with simultaneous involvement of kidney and upper and lower respiratory tract is unusual. We report an instructive case of WG, analyzing clinical course, laboratory, and radiological features, kidney, lung, and larynx histological pictures.

Renal involvement in psychological eating disorders.

Psychological eating disorders--anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder--are an increasing public health problem with severe clinical manifestations: hypothermia, hypotension, electrolyte imbalance, endocrine disorders and kidney failure; they are of interest to nephrologists, but pathophysiological mechanisms in determining the renal involvement are still unclear. We describe pathophysiology, histological features and clinical manifestations of the most frequent psychological eating disorders: AN and BN. Regarding AN, we analyze the recent literature, and identify 3 principal pathways towards renal involvement: chronic dehydration-hypokalemia, nephrocalcinosis and chronic rhabdomyolysis.

Incidence of hepatitis C virus infection in patients with chronic kidney disease on conservative therapy.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a never-ending public health problem. Many studies have investigated the incidence of HCV infection among dialysis patients, but there have only been a few epidemiological studies in renal conservative therapy. We studied 320 subjects with pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease living in Sicily, Italy.