Two journal articles in mid May focused on different aspects of end-stage renal disease: the probability of patients with ESRD also having coronary-artery calcification and the association of ESRD with low birth weight.
* Coronary-artery calcification is common in young adults with end-stage renal disease who are undergoing dialysis, William G. Goodman, MD, and colleagues at UCLA School of Medicine reported on May 18 in The New England Journal of Medicine (2000;342:1478-1483). In 39 patients with renal disease, coronary-artery calcification was detected in none of 23 patients younger than 20 and in 14 of 16 patients ages 20 to 30. Those with calcification also had been undergoing dialysis longer than the patients without calcification. In contrast, calcification was present in 3 of 60 control subjects. "The adverse cardiovascular implications of coronary-artery calcification in patients with end-stage renal disease who are treated by long-term dialysis underscore the need to expedite renal transplantation in those in whom end-stage renal disease develops in childhood or adolescence," the authors concluded.
* Low birth weight is associated with early-onset end-stage renal disease in men and women and blacks and whites in South Carolina, where there are unusually high rates of end-stage renal disease. Daniel T. Lackland, DrPH, of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and colleagues reported on May 22 in Archives of Internal Medicine (2000;160:1472-1476) that they compared birth weights of 2460 controls and 1230 patients-all younger than 50--who were diagnosed with renal failure and undergoing dialysis from 1991 through 1996. End-stage renal disease was 40% more common among people who were born weighing less than 2.5 kg (about 5½ pounds) versus those who weighed 3 to 3.5 kg.
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