Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and Heart Failure (HF) are commonly coexistent conditions and both share common risk factors and comorbidities. In a recent study, researchers have found iron deficiency as an independent risk factor for heart failure hospitalization in patients with CKD. The study findings were published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in March of 2021.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) remains amongst the five leading causes of years lived with disability in humans and the top cause in women. Myocardial iron content has been shown to be lower in HF, measured by magnetic resonance imaging as well as in samples of the left ventricle of the human heart. Previous studies have reported that iron dysmetabolism potentially contributes to heart failure, but this relationship has not been well characterized in CKD.

Therefore, researchers of Monique E. Cho, MD, of the Veterans Affairs Salt Lake City Health Care System and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and colleagues conducted a study to evaluate the association between serum iron indices and heart failure hospitalization in the CKD population.

Almost 750,000 people per year undergo kidney failure in the U.S., according to statistics from the University of California San Francisco. For those who cannot receive a transplant, dialysis—mechanical filtering of blood—is the most common treatment.

Scientists have been trying for years to make smaller, more efficient dialysis filters. Since 2016, Moghaddam and Rode have successfully worked on their own and published their findings in February in the "Advanced Materials Interfaces" journal. Now, the team is making its discovery wearable for at-home, overnight dialysis.

It's called a graphene oxide membrane, and a full prototype device will be made in the next year, the engineers said.

RenalytixAl plc announced that KidneyIntelX™ more accurately predicted progressive kidney function decline and kidney failure in a multi-center, diverse cohort of 1,146 type 2 diabetes patients with early-stage (stages 1, 2, and 3) kidney disease versus the current standard of care.

The results of the study, which is the second peer-reviewed clinical validation study on KidneyIntelX, have been published in Diabetologia, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

In the study, KidneyIntelX more accurately identified and segmented patients into three risk categories (low, intermediate and high) when compared to clinical models, including the current standard of care, the KDIGO risk stratification algorithm. When guideline-recommended urine albumin to creatinine ratio testing was performed, the positive predictive value (PPV) for progressive decline in kidney function was 69% for those scored as high-risk by KidneyIntelX versus the 40% identified as highest-risk by KDIGO categorization.

This is a 72% improvement compared to standard of care. In addition, only 7% of those scored as low-risk by KidneyIntelX experienced progression (i.e., negative predictive value of 93%).