The Pliocene lignite hypothesis is an environmental hypothesis that has been proposed to explain the etiology of Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN). Aqueous leaching experiments were conducted on a variety of coal samples in order to simulate groundwater leaching of organic compounds, and to further test the role of the Pliocene lignite hypothesis in the etiology of BEN. Experiments were performe...

A Raas-Rothschild, R Bargal, O Goldman, E Ben-Asher, J E M Groener, A Toutain, E Stemmer, Z Ben-Neriah, H Flusser, F A Beemer, M Penttinen, T Olender, A J J T Rein, G Bach, M Zeigler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

Balkan Endemic Nephropathy occurs with a high rate of prevalence in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. The first cases described in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania date to the late 1950s and early 1960s. BEN has been characterized to date as a chronic, slowly progressive familial tubular interstitial renal disease of unknown aetiology. The disease is characterized by i...

Carbon isotopic studies from marine organic matter of the Permian-Triassic Maitai Group, New Zealand, reveal a significant 5Corg shift toward more negative values within the Little Ben Sandstone Formation. These isotopic data chemostratigraphically define the previously debated position of the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Maitai Group. The Permian-Triassic record of the Maitai Group is also...

Analgesic nephropathy (AN) was described in 1953 as tubulointerstitial kidney disease associated with chronic abuse of analgetic mixtures. Chinese herbs nephropathy (CHN), another tubulointerstitial kidney disease, on the basis of morphological and clinical grounds, was found similar to Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN), and a common etiologic agent, aristolochic acid, was suspected. However, se...

Fragmentary utterances such as ‘short’ answers and subsentential XPs without linguistic antecedents are proposed to have fully sentential syntactic structures, subject to ellipsis. Ellipsis in these cases is preceded by A′-movement of the fragment to a clause-peripheral position; the combination of movement and ellipsis accounts for a wide range of connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in ...

The aim of this article is to compare the incidence of thanatophobia in dialysed patients having Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) with a control group (N18) members where some of them have chronic renal failure (CRF), but not (BEN). We examined thanatophobia on a sample of 753 dialysed patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) during the period from 1st January 2...

During the 90s, wars and economic hardship hampered most attempts for serious research in Serbia, as well as in other BEN affected countries. This relative lull in intensive research provided an opportunity for identifying key problems and assessing priorities for future research. The following issues were singled out as relevant from this point of view: 1. What is the trend of BEN? Did it disa...