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Nutrition

Can ghrelin improve appetite in uremic wasting?

Small-scale clinical trials have provided encouraging evidence on the short-term orexigenic effects of subcutaneous ghrelin administration in malnourished dialysis patients. New treatment strategies to tackle the excess mortality of this patient group are urgently needed, but the strengths, shortcomings and unanswered questions related to ghrelin treatment need to be highlighted.

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Correspondence to Peter Stenvinkel.

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Carrero, J., Stenvinkel, P. Can ghrelin improve appetite in uremic wasting?. Nat Rev Nephrol 5, 672–673 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneph.2009.171

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