Introduction : Diabetes mellitus (DM) has become a global economic burden due to treatment costs and attendant complications. Albuminuria is the precursor of end stage renal failure and is an inflammatory process. In the recent past, it has been reported that the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlations between laboratory findings and ultrasonographic measurements of renal length and cortical thickness in patients receiving follow-up for chronic kidney disease (CKD). A total of 41 CKD patients (18 males and 23 females; mean age, 65.2 years; range, 42 to 85 years) with a low glomerular filtration rate who did not require renal replacement therapy were included in this prospective study. Patients were followed up with laboratory assays at bimonthly intervals and with ultrasonography performed twice a year. Renal cortical thickness, renal length, and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) values were compared using the paired-samples t test. Additionally, Pearson correlation analysis was conducted between renal length and cortical thickness measurements and eGFR values to assess kidney function. At the beginning of the study and after 24 months, mean eGFR values of the 41 patients were 35.92 mL/min and 28.38 mL/min, respectively. The mean renal length was 91.29 mm at the beginning of the study and 90.24 mm at the end of the study. The mean cortical thickness was 5.76±2.05 mm at the beginning of the study and 5.28±1.99 mm at the end of the study. A statistically significant positive association was found between eGFR and mean renal length (r=0.66, P<0.01) and between eGFR and mean cortical thickness (r=0.85, P<0.01), with the latter being more prominent. Our study suggests that ultrasonographic cortical thickness measurements may be an important imaging technique in the follow-up care of patients with CKD.

Güneş M, et al. Korean J Urol. 2015 Apr;56(4):324-329. http://dx.doi.org/10.4111/kju.2015.56.4.324

Novel treatment modalities are urgently required for androgen-independent prostate cancer. In order to develop an alternative treatment for prostate cancer, the cytotoxic effects of the 26S proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, either alone or in combination with the two commonly used chemotherapeutic agents irinotecan and etoposide, on the human prostate cancer cell line PC‑3 were evaluated in the present study. The PC‑3 cell line was maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium with 10% fetal bovine serum and treated with various doses of bortezomib, irinotecan, etoposide or their combinations. The growth inhibitory and cytotoxic effects were determined by water‑soluble tetrazolium (WST)‑1 assay, 3‑(4,5‑dimethylthiazol‑2‑yl)‑2,5‑diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay or iCELLigence system. The combination index values were determined by the Chou‑Talalay method. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of bortezomib on the PC‑3 cell line was determined to be 53.4 nM by WST‑1 assay, whereas the IC50 values of irinotecan and etoposide were determined to be 2.1 and 26.5 µM, respectively. These results suggest that the 26S proteasome inhibitor bortezomib is more potent, compared with irinotecan and etoposide, in the androgen‑insensitive and tumor protein p53‑null cell line PC‑3. The combined effects of bortezomib+irinotecan and bortezomib+etoposide were also tested on PC‑3 cells. The effect of bortezomib+irinotecan combination was not significantly different than that produced by either monotherapy, according to the results of iCELLigence system and MTT assay. However, 40 nM bortezomib+5 µM etoposide or 40 nM bortezomib+20 µM etoposide combinations were observed to be more effective than each drug tested alone. The results of the current study suggest that bortezomib and etoposide combination may be additionally evaluated in clinical trials for the treatment of hormone-refractory prostate cancer.