Adherence to ketoacids/essential amino acids-supplemented low protein diets and new indications for patients with chronic kidney disease.

Background: Low protein diets (LPD) have long been prescribed to chronic kidney disease patients with the goals of improving metabolic abnormalities and postpone the start of maintenance dialysis.

Methods: We reviewed the recent literature addressing low protein diets supplemented with ketoacids/essential aminoacids prescribed during chronic kidney disease and their effects on metabolic, nutritional and renal parameters since 2013.

Results: We show new information on how to improve adherence to these diets, on metabolic improvement and delay of the dialysis needs, and preliminary data in chronic kidney disease associated pregnancy.

Is Serum Prostate-specific Antigen a Diagnostic Marker for Benign and Malignant Breast Tumors in Women.

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Prostrate-specific antigen (PSA) is a marker of prostate gland malignancy which has been considered in cases with breast cancer in recent years. The goal of this study was to determine total and free PSA levels in cases with malignant and benign breast lesions.

Pneumo-Renal Syndrome in Anti- Neutrophil Cytoplasm Antibody (ANCA)-Associated Small-Vessel Vasculitis.

Objectives: We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of lung hemorrhage, its determinants and its prognostic significance in adults patients with severe kidney involvement due to ANCA-associated vasculitis diagnosed and treated in a nephrology department.

Material And Methods: Seventy-five patients consecutively diagnosed by kidney biopsy with crescentic pauci-immune glomerulonephritis entered this cohort study and were grouped according to the presence of diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH - diagnosed as diffuse alveolar pattern on chest radiographs and anemia without evidence of another external bleeding). ANCAs were assessed by capture PR3-ANCA and MPO-ANCA ELISA or by indirect immunofluorescence.

Ultrastructural defects of the glomerular basement membranes associated with primary glomerular nephropathies.

It is generally accepted that a glomerular basement membrane (GBM) thinner than 200 nm should be considered below normal. When this abnormality has a global and diffuse distribution, the associated clinical condition is a benign familial hematuria related to mutations of the COL4A4/COL4A3 genes, or an Alport syndrome. More often the GBM defects display a focal and segmental pattern, too small to express a thin glomerular basement membrane disease.