BACKGROUND Interstitial eosinophilic aggregates (IEA) in renal biopsies often suggest allergic tubulointerstitial nephritis, yet clear associations with drug reactions are often difficult to establish. IEA are also encountered in diabetic nephropathy (DN) and thought to be attributed to medication exposure. METHODS Native medical kidney biopsies performed at the University of Washington Medic...

A growing body of evidence indicates that the renal proximal tubular epithelial cell (PTEC) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy (DN). Microalbuminuria that intensifies over time to overt proteinuria, a hallmark of DN, is already known to activate the PTEC to induce tubulointerstitial inflammation. In addition to proteins, a number of diabetic substrates including...

Abstract. Let Xn be the number of cuts needed to isolate the root in a random recursive tree with n vertices. We provide a weak convergence result for Xn. The basic observation for its proof is that the probability distributions of {Xn : n = 2, 3, . . .} are recursively defined by Xn d = Xn−Dn + 1, n = 2, 3, . . ., X1 = 0, where Dn is a discrete random variable with P{Dn = k} = 1 k(k+1) n n−1 ,...

Andersson and Nilsson have already shown that the average depth Dn of random LC-tries is only Θ (log∗ n) when the keys are produced by a symmetric memoryless process, and that Dn = O (log log n) when the process is asymmetric. In this paper we refine the second estimate by showing that asymptotically (with n → ∞): Dn ∼ 1 η log log n, where n is the number of keys inserted in a trie, η = − log (...

Diabetic nephropathy (DN), a leading cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) affecting ∼20-30% diabetics, is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. The progression of kidney disease in patients with diabetes can take many years. It occurs as a result of interaction between both genetic and environmental factors in individuals with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Hyperglycaemia, hy...

Recently, several studies reported increased signal intensity (SI) in the dentate nucleus (DN) after repeated application of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs), suggesting a deposition of gadolinium in this location. Patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) frequently show increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier as part of the inflammatory process in the brain...

Although platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-BB is thought to participate in vascular disorders, the mechanism of PDGF-induced vascular smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation is not fully understood. This study was undertaken to examine the role of c-Jun in PDGF-BB-induced proliferation of rat aortic SMCs. PDGF-BB (10 ng/mL) significantly increased activator protein (AP)-1 DNA binding activit...

Branching morphogenesis is a fundamental process in the development of the kidney. This process gives rise to a network of ducts, which form the collecting system. Defective branching can lead to a multitude of kidney disorders including agenesis and reduced nephron number. The formation of branching tubules involves changes in cell shape, cell motility, and reorganization of the cytoskeleton. ...

(D1+, . . . , DN+) = (d1+, . . . , dN+) def = d+. Let DN,d+ denote the set of all undirected N ×N adjacency matrices with degree counts equal to d+. This note describes an algorithm for sampling uniformly from the set DN,d+ . Sampling uniformly from DN,d+ has a number of uses. First, as we will see later, it facilitates conditional inference on, and conditional estimation of, certain models of ...