Recent findings from the Chronic Kidney Disease Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (CKDopps) advance our knowledge of the patient experience of pruritus, or itchy skin earlier in the lifecycle of kidney disease. This study demonstrates the high prevalence of pruritus and it's strong relationship to the quality of life, poor sleep, and symptoms of depression. Check out the work of Nidhi Sukul, MD and CKDopps collaborators in Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

The priceless gift of a transplanted organ comes with life-long costs of the critical immunosuppressant medications that prevent rejection. Although Medicare provides coverage for these drugs to kidney transplant recipients in the three years following a transplant, many transplant recipients have difficulty affording the related out-of-pocket costs post-transplantation.

Findings of a study conducted by Arbor Research Collaborative for Health indicate the potential of relief for these patients and Medicare. This work by Margaret E. Helmuth and her colleagues was published February 28, 2019, in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). They examined cost changes following the introduction of generic variations of two commonly prescribed immunosuppressants and determined that the introduction of generic medications in this class has resulted in substantial savings for transplant patients and Medicare.

Currently, women with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are treated according to their most troubling symptom. This approach is not always completely successful, as it does not take into account that patients can have multiple symptoms that respond to different treatments.

For each American who has kidney failure, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) spends more than $80,000 per year for dialysis treatment. This cost drops to only $30,000 when a patient receives a kidney transplant and no longer needs dialysis.