Browsing by Author "Rhee, Eugene P."

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    A Metabolomics Approach to Identify Metabolites Associated With Mortality in Patients Receiving Maintenance Hemodialysis
    (Elsevier, 2024-06-29) Al Awadhi, Solaf; Myint, Leslie; Guallar, Eliseo; Clish, Clary B.; Wulczyn, Kendra E.; Kalim, Sahir; Thadhani, Ravi; Segev, Dorry L.; McAdams DeMarco, Mara; Moe, Sharon M.; Moorthi, Ranjani N.; Hostetter, Thomas H.; Himmelfarb, Jonathan; Meyer, Timothy W.; Powe, Neil R.; Tonelli, Marcello; Rhee, Eugene P.; Shafi, Tariq; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Introduction: Uremic toxins contributing to increased risk of death remain largely unknown. We used untargeted metabolomics to identify plasma metabolites associated with mortality in patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis. Methods: We measured metabolites in serum samples from 522 Longitudinal US/Canada Incident Dialysis (LUCID) study participants. We assessed the association between metabolites and 1-year mortality, adjusting for age, sex, race, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, body mass index, serum albumin, Kt/Vurea, dialysis duration, and country. We modeled these associations using limma, a metabolite-wise linear model with empirical Bayesian inference, and 2 machine learning (ML) models: Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and random forest (RF). We accounted for multiple testing using a false discovery rate (pFDR) adjustment. We defined significant mortality-metabolite associations as pFDR < 0.1 in the limma model and metabolites of at least medium importance in both ML models. Results: The mean age of the participants was 64 years, the mean dialysis duration was 35 days, and there were 44 deaths (8.4%) during a 1-year follow-up period. Two metabolites were significantly associated with 1-year mortality. Quinolinate levels (a kynurenine pathway metabolite) were 1.72-fold higher in patients who died within year 1 compared with those who did not (pFDR, 0.009), wheras mesaconate levels (an emerging immunometabolite) were 1.57-fold higher (pFDR, 0.002). An additional 42 metabolites had high importance as per LASSO, 46 per RF, and 9 per both ML models but were not significant per limma. Conclusion: Quinolinate and mesaconate were significantly associated with a 1-year risk of death in incident patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis. External validation of our findings is needed.
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    Myocardial Cytoskeletal Adaptations in Advanced Kidney Disease
    (American Heart Association, 2022) Halim, Arvin; Narayanan, Gayatri; Hato, Takashi; Ho, Lilun; Wan, Douglas; Siedlecki, Andrew M.; Rhee, Eugene P.; Allegretti, Andrew S.; Nigwekar, Sagar U.; Zehnder, Daniel; Hiemstra, Thomas F.; Bonventre, Joseph V.; Charytan, David M.; Kalim, Sahir; Thadhani, Ravi; Lu, Tzongshi; Lim, Kenneth; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Background: The myocardial cytoskeleton functions as the fundamental framework critical for organelle function, bioenergetics and myocardial remodeling. To date, impairment of the myocardial cytoskeleton occurring in the failing heart in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease has been largely undescribed. Methods and Results: We conducted a 3‐arm cross‐sectional cohort study of explanted human heart tissues from patients who are dependent on hemodialysis (n=19), hypertension (n=10) with preserved renal function, and healthy controls (n=21). Left ventricular tissues were subjected to pathologic examination and next‐generation RNA sequencing. Mechanistic and interference RNA studies utilizing in vitro human cardiac fibroblast models were performed. Left ventricular tissues from patients undergoing hemodialysis exhibited increased myocardial wall thickness and significantly greater fibrosis compared with hypertension patients (P<0.05) and control (P<0.01). Transcriptomic analysis revealed that the focal adhesion pathway was significantly enriched in hearts from patients undergoing hemodialysis. Hearts from patients undergoing hemodialysis exhibited dysregulated components of the focal adhesion pathway including reduced β‐actin (P<0.01), β‐tubulin (P<0.01), vimentin (P<0.05), and increased expression of vinculin (P<0.05) compared with controls. Cytoskeletal adaptations in hearts from the hemodialysis group were associated with impaired mitochondrial bioenergetics, including dysregulated mitochondrial dynamics and fusion, and loss of cell survival pathways. Mechanistic studies revealed that cytoskeletal changes can be driven by uremic and metabolic abnormalities of chronic kidney disease, in vitro. Furthermore, focal adhesion kinase silencing via interference RNA suppressed major cytoskeletal proteins synergistically with mineral stressors found in chronic kidney disease in vitro. Conclusions: Myocardial failure in advanced chronic kidney disease is characterized by impairment of the cytoskeleton involving disruption of the focal adhesion pathway, mitochondrial failure, and loss of cell survival pathways.
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    Plasma metabolites and physical function in patients undergoing hemodialysis
    (Springer Nature, 2024-04-10) Moorthi, Ranjani N.; Moe, Sharon M.; O’Connell, Thomas; Dickinson, Stephanie; Kalim, Sahir; Thadhani, Ravi; Clish, Clary B.; Shafi, Tariq; Rhee, Eugene P.; Avin, Keith G.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Impaired physical function contributes to falls, fractures, and mortality among patients undergoing dialysis. Using a metabolomic approach, we identified metabolite alterations and effect size-based composite scores for constructs of impaired gait speed and grip strength. 108 participants incident to dialysis had targeted plasma metabolomics via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and physical function assessed (i.e., 4 m walk, handgrip strength). Physical function measures were categorized as above/ below median, with grip utilizing sex-based medians. To develop composite scores, metabolites were identified via Wilcoxon uncorrected p < 0.05 and effect size > 0.40. Receiver operating characteristic analyses tested whether scores differentiated between above/below function groups. Participants were 54% male, 77% Black and 53 ± 14 y with dialysis vintage of 101 ± 50 days. Median (IQR) grip strength was 35.5 (11.1) kg (males) and 20 (8.4) kg (females); median gait speed was 0.82 (0.34) m/s. Of 246 measured metabolites, composite scores were composed of 22 and 12 metabolites for grip strength and gait speed, respectively. Area under the curve for metabolite composite was 0.88 (gait) and 0.911 (grip). Composite scores of physical function performed better than clinical parameters alone in patients on dialysis. These results provide potential pathways for interventions and needed validation in an independent cohort.
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    Plasma proteomics of acute tubular injury
    (Springer Nature, 2024-08-27) Schmidt, Insa M.; Surapaneni, Aditya L.; Zhao, Runqi; Upadhyay, Dhairya; Yeo, Wan-Jin; Schlosser, Pascal; Huynh, Courtney; Srivastava, Anand; Palsson, Ragnar; Kim, Taesoo; Stillman, Isaac E.; Barwinska, Daria; Barasch, Jonathan; Eadon, Michael T.; El-Achkar, Tarek M.; Henderson, Joel; Moledina, Dennis G.; Rosas, Sylvia E.; Claudel, Sophie E.; Verma, Ashish; Wen, Yumeng; Lindenmayer, Maja; Huber, Tobias B.; Parikh, Samir V.; Shapiro, John P.; Rovin, Brad H.; Stanaway, Ian B.; Sathe, Neha A.; Bhatraju, Pavan K.; Coresh, Josef; Kidney Precision Medicine Project; Rhee, Eugene P.; Grams, Morgan E.; Waikar, Sushrut S.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    The kidney tubules constitute two-thirds of the cells of the kidney and account for the majority of the organ’s metabolic energy expenditure. Acute tubular injury (ATI) is observed across various types of kidney diseases and may significantly contribute to progression to kidney failure. Non-invasive biomarkers of ATI may allow for early detection and drug development. Using the SomaScan proteomics platform on 434 patients with biopsy-confirmed kidney disease, we here identify plasma biomarkers associated with ATI severity. We employ regional transcriptomics and proteomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, and pathway analysis to explore biomarker protein and gene expression and enriched biological pathways. Additionally, we examine ATI biomarker associations with acute kidney injury (AKI) in the Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) (n = 44), the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study (n = 4610), and the COVID-19 Host Response and Clinical Outcomes (CHROME) study (n = 268). Our findings indicate 156 plasma proteins significantly linked to ATI with osteopontin, macrophage mannose receptor 1, and tenascin C showing the strongest associations. Pathway analysis highlight immune regulation and organelle stress responses in ATI pathogenesis.
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    Prevalence and Persistence of Uremic Symptoms in Incident Dialysis Patients
    (ASN, 2020-02-01) Rhee, Eugene P.; Guallar, Eliseo; Hwang, Seungyoung; Kim, Noori; Tonelli, Marcello; Moe, Sharon M.; Himmelfarb, Jonathan; Thadhani, Ravi I.; Powe, Neil R.; Shafi, Tariq; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Background Uremic symptoms are major contributors to the poor quality of life among patients on dialysis, but whether their prevalence or intensity has changed over time is unknown. Methods We examined responses to validated questionnaires in two incident dialysis cohort studies, the Choices for Health Outcomes in Caring for ESRD (CHOICE) study (N=926, 1995–1998) and the Longitudinal United States/Canada Incident Dialysis (LUCID) study (N=428, 2011–2017). We determined the prevalence and severity of uremic symptoms—anorexia, nausea/vomiting, pruritus, sleepiness, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, and pain—in both cohorts. Results In CHOICE and LUCID, respectively, mean age of the participants was 58 and 60 years, 53% and 60% were male, and 28% and 32% were black. In both cohorts, 54% of the participants had diabetes. Median time from dialysis initiation to the symptoms questionnaires was 45 days for CHOICE and 77 days for LUCID. Uremic symptom prevalence in CHOICE did not change from baseline to 1-year follow-up and was similar across CHOICE and LUCID. Baseline symptom prevalence in CHOICE and LUCID was as follows: anorexia (44%, 44%, respectively), nausea/vomiting (36%, 43%), pruritus (72%, 63%), sleepiness (86%, 68%), difficulty concentrating (55%, 57%), fatigue (89%, 77%), and pain (82%, 79%). In both cohorts, >80% of patients had three or more symptoms and >50% had five or more symptoms. The correlation between individual symptoms was low (ρ<0.5 for all comparisons). In CHOICE, no clinical or laboratory parameter was strongly associated with multiple symptoms. Conclusions The burden of uremic symptoms among patients on dialysis is substantial and has not changed in the past 15 years. Improving quality of life will require identification of the factors that underlie the pathogenesis of uremic symptoms and better ways of removing the toxins that are responsible.