Volume 16 Issue 1, January 2020

A new genome-wide association study of patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus reveals novel loci that are associated with the development of diabetic kidney disease. The most significant of these loci encodes the α3 chain of type IV collagen, which is an important component of the glomerular basement membrane.

Once confined to the world of science fiction, advances in information technology, particularly in computational and storage resources, have enabled use of artificial intelligence in medicine to become a reality. Two new studies report the use of deep learning — currently the most promising algorithmic artificial intelligence approach — in kidney pathology.

Fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) is crucial to phosphate and calcium homeostasis. In this Review, the authors discuss how levels of biologically active FGF23 are controlled by balanced FGF23 transcription and protein cleavage, and how serum iron levels, inflammation and erythropoietin affect that balance.

In this Review, the authors examine current efforts to develop a precision medicine approach that informs the diagnosis and treatment of patients with sepsis. Prognostic and predictive enrichment strategies in sepsis might also provide insight into the mechanisms that drive sepsis-associated acute kidney injury, a common complication of sepsis.

Staphylococcus infection-associated glomerulonephritis (SAGN) and acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (APSGN) are the two main types of bacterial infection-associated glomerulonephritis. In this Review, the authors discuss the epidemiology of these diseases, common histopathology findings and the complexities of clinical diagnosis, as well as patient management and renal outcomes.

The authors of this Perspectives article describe the physiological and statistical principles underlying measured glomerular filtration rate (mGFR) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). They discuss their limitations, the circumstances under which mGFR and eGFR should be used, and approaches to improve these methodologies.