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Medal of Excellence Tickets Now Available! |  |
Tickets for the 2011 AAKP Medal of Excellence Award Dinner are now available for purchase. During this event, AAKP will honor Raymond M. Hakim, PhD, MD, and Allen Nissenson, MD, FACP for their extraordinary devotion and skills in the renal field.
The Medal of Excellence Award Dinner takes place March 18, 2011, at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. The Dinner is being held in conjunction with the Renal Physicians Association Annual Meeting.
To purchase tickets for the Medal of Excellence, please contact AAKP at (800) 749-2257 or click here to purchase tickets online. |
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| Complications from Kidney Disease Predicted by New Test |  Cystatin C, a blood marker of kidney function, proved significantly more accurate than the standard blood marker, creatinine, in predicting serious complications of kidney disease, according to a new study. Among adults who were identified as having chronic kidney disease (CKD) by high creatinine levels, the researchers found that only patients who also had abnormally high levels of cystatin C were at high risk for death, cardiovascular disease, heart failure, or kidney failure. People with high creatinine but normal cystatin C levels had risks similar to those with normal creatinine levels. The researchers also found that a small segment of the study population was missed by creatinine but identified by cystatin C as being at significant risk of serious complications. The study appears in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. |
| Vytorin Protects CKD Patients from Major Vascular Events |
Experimental drug Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastatin) was found to lower the risk of major vascular events by 16.1 percent compared to a placebo for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Vytorin is a cholesterol lowering medication. Examples of major vascular events are non-fatal heart attacks or strokes. Vytorin is currently approved for patients with primary hypercholesterolemia or mixed hyperlipidemia and will seek approval for patients with chronic kidney disease following the positive results of the latest trial. The trial - SHARP (Study of Heart and Renal Protection) - included 9,000 advanced or end-stage chronic kidney disease patients. Two-thirds of the participants were not on dialysis initially. Half of the 9,000 patients were given a placebo and the other half Vytorin. They were monitored for approximately 4 years. Fifteen percent of the those in the Vytorin group had a major vascular event compared to eighteen percent in the placebo group. |
| Cholesterol Counts in Kidney Disease Patients |
To understand the health effects of high cholesterol levels, doctors first need to assess malnutrition and inflammation status in their chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients, according to a study in the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). Patients with CKD often develop and die from cardiovascular disease (CVD). While it's well known that high cholesterol puts people at risk for CVD in the general population, the relationship is not so clear in CKD patients. In fact, research has shown that dialysis patients with higher cholesterol levels die at a lower rate than those with lower cholesterol levels. It's not that high cholesterol is beneficial; rather, it may indicate a lesser degree of malnutrition and inflammation, two serious and interrelated complications of kidney disease.
To see whether malnutrition and/or inflammation might modify the relationship of cholesterol and CVD, researchers studied individuals with hypertension and CKD who were not yet on dialysis, 31 percent of whom had malnutrition and/or inflammation. Over the course of 12 years, 20 percent of patients experienced a new CVD event such as heart attack, stroke, congestive heart failure, or death from heart disease, with similar numbers in the groups with and without malnutrition and/or inflammation. In the patients with malnutrition and/or inflammation, high blood cholesterol levels were not associated with CVD events; however, in the patients without malnutrition and/or inflammation, patients' risk of developing a new CVD event increased as cholesterol levels rose. Doctors caring for CKD patients should take into account the presence of malnutrition and inflammation as they interpret blood cholesterol levels. |
| Abnormal Heart Rates Increase Risk of Kidney Disease |  Individuals with a high resting heart rate and a low beat-to-beat heart rate variability have an increased risk of developing kidney disease, according to a study in the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that the behavior of the autonomic nervous system may be a marker for late development of certain cases of kidney disease. The autonomic nervous system regulates unconscious body functions, including heart rate, blood pressure, temperature regulation, and responses to stress. Dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system (dysautonomia) has been linked to chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its progression, but the details of this association are unclear.
To study the relationship between dysautonomia and the development of kidney disease, researchers measured heart rate variability. In most healthy young adults, resting heart rate will predictably accelerate and decelerate as a person breathes. In general, lower resting heart rates and greater beat-to-beat variability in heart rate indicate a healthy autonomic nervous system and good cardiovascular health. On the other hand, higher resting heart rates and lower beat-to-beat variability in heart rate are signs of dysautonomia. Researchers found that patients with higher resting heart rates had a 2-fold increased risk of developing kidney failure many years later. |
| Hearing Loss Common in Patients with Moderate CKD | |
 Older adults with moderate chronic kidney disease (CKD) have a higher prevalence of hearing loss than those of the same age without CKD, according to a report in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. Researchers assessed more than 2,900 individuals aged 50 and older, including 513 with moderate chronic kidney disease. Of those with CKD, over 54 percent reported some level of hearing loss compared to only 28 percent of the rest of the group. Nearly 30 percent of the CKD participants showed severe hearing loss compared with only 10 percent of the non-CKD participants.
Hearing loss is commonly linked to syndromal kidney disease. However, this study suggests a strong tie to CKD in general. The link can be explained by structural and functional similarities between tissues in the inner ear and in the kidney. Additionally, toxins that accumulate in kidney failure can damage nerves, including those in the inner ear. Another reason for this connection is that kidney disease and hearing loss share common risk factors, including diabetes, high blood pressure and advanced age. These findings could lead to a modification of the usual care of people with CKD. Earlier hearing assessments and fitting of hearing aids in CKD patients can improve quality of life and lead to better management of underlying conditions which could, in turn, potentially preserve hearing function. |
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