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Visual field testing should be done after hemodialysis in patients who are on regular hemodialysis program.

Besides well-known cardiovascular (CV) risk factors, cTnI and beta2M were related with C-IMT in that they may have important roles in early-onset atherosclerosis in this high-risk population.

The results suggest that MIS and MSPSS are the strongest predictors of depressive affect in HD patients. Further research is needed to understand the causal relationship between depressive affect and MICS in HD patients.

After two intramuscular (IM) vaccination protocols (40 μg at 0, 1, 2, and 6 months), patients who were unresponsive to hepatitis B vaccination were collected from three HD centers. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of intradermal (ID) and repeated IM vaccination protocols. Thirty-three of 639 HD patients were found to be unresponsive. Patients were randomly assigned into two groups: one to receive 80 μg ID and the other 160 μg IM vaccination protocol. Both ID (p=0.000) and IM (p=0.03) groups disclosed statistically significant seroconversion rates six months after the last vaccination dose. The seroconversion rate was 94.1% in the ID and 50% in the IM groups-showing a significant improvement in the ID group (p=0.011). A low-dose ID is superior to standard IM vaccination protocol and also more cost-effective in unresponsive HD patients.

Visceral leishmaniasis is a rare opportunistic infection in renal transplantation patients and its presentation may be associated with or masked by many other factors in immunosuppressed patients. So, if it is not searched for in particular, diagnosis may be easily overlooked or delayed in renal transplant patients. A 32-year-old renal transplant recipient devoleped splenomegaly, pyrexia and pancytopenia. Six months after the first bone marrow examination, the delayed diagnosis was made possible by a second bone marrow aspiration. Liposomal amphotericin B was effective in his treatment although he had a recurrence. Early diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis is crucial for the renal transplant recipient's therapy; and even in treated patients, the mortality rate may be high. In our case, although the time up to diagnosis was as long as six months after the onset of symptoms, response to treatment was satisfactory with higher doses of liposomal amphotericin B in the second cycle. Also, in the short term, the rate of recurrence was comparable to other reported patients who were diagnosed and treated in a month.

The role of beta2-microglobulin (β2M) in dialysis-related amyloidosis as a specific amyloid precursor was defined in the 1980s. Studies in those years were largely related to β2M amyloidosis. In 2005, for what was probably the first time in the available literature, we provided data about the association between β2M and early-onset atherosclerosis in hemodialysis patients without co-morbidities. In recent years, the role of uremic toxins in uremic atherosclerosis and the interest in β2M as a marker of cardiovascular (CV) and/or mortality risk have grown. In the current literature, clinical studies suggest that β2M is an independent, significant predictor of mortality, not only in dialysis patients, but also in predialysis patients and in the high-risk portion of the general population, and it seems to be a factor strongly linked to the presence and severity of CV disease. It is still unknown whether β2M is only a uremic toxin marker or if it also has an active role in vascular damage, but data support that it may reflect an increased burden of systemic atherosclerosis in a setting of underlying chronic kidney disease. Thus, although there have been some inconsistencies among the various analyses relating to β2M, it promises to be a novel risk marker of kidney function in the awareness and detection of high-risk patients. However, more research is required to establish the pathophysiological relationships between retained uremic toxins and further biochemical modifications in the uremic milieu to get answers to the questions of why and how. In this review, the recent literature about the changing role of β2M in uremic patients will be examined.