A bio-med blog post detailing the current research projects in building the "holy grail" of ESRD - the artificial kidney. The three prototypes and relevant papers are linked in this post. These are the "Wearable Artificial Kidney", the "Cyborg Kidney" and the so called dark horse "Qidni".

Complement is central to pathophysiology of several renal diseases including transplantation. This review from Nature Reviews gives an overview of the complement system with a focus on the various players in complement pathways and how they relate to kidney disease and transplantation.

In addition to the review above, complement is also the centerpeice of a review in CJASN this month.

Also from CJASN, this review brings focus on the Players in Glomerular diseases where it discusses the role of various cells of the glomerulus and the transients and patrolling cells, in causing renal disease.

Tweeted out this week were the EULAR/ERA-EDTA recommendations for the
management of ANCA-associated vasculitis.

Save the vein is important for future successful fistula creation and success. A study investigating the effect of peripherally inserted central catheters on future AVF creation and success was published in CJASN. Patients with PICCs in the year pre or post dialysis start were less likely to get a working fistula.

Chronic kidney disease is a growing problem in the low and middle income countries. We had briefly touched on this topic in #NephMadness 2016 . A recent paper in @NDTSocial highlights the epidemiology of CKD in these nations and brings to fore the challenges in improving the care of CKD patients in this rapidly growing population.

What would you do for asymptomatic Hypertensive urgency presenting in a clinic - send to ED or send home? It seems the outcomes are really not very different whether you send them home or to ED. In this retrospective study published in JAMA Internal Medicine - patients sent home did not have any different major cardiovascular events at 1 week, 1 month or 6 months. And most patients continued to have uncontrolled hypertension at 6 months.

The EMPA-REG Renal outcomes #NEPHJC is just round the corner. A timely review to go with it is this one from Current Opinion in Nephrology and Hypertension which delves into the recent preclinical and clinical trials on new insights into treatment of diabetic kidney disease.

Rounding up this week with a nice review on Renal complications of Hematopoietic-Cell Transplantation from NEJM.

- Nikhil Shah (@dr_nikhilshah)