Highlights of 60 years of renal science

John Feehally
Renal Association Archivist

Throughout 2010, to help celebrate the Renal Association’s 60th anniversary, I will be bringing you a selection of interesting and seminal abstracts presented at RA meetings since 1950.

You will see one new abstract on the RA website each month – with commentary. With only a dozen abstracts to be selected for the whole year, I have decided to select two abstracts from each decade – and I ask you all to accept in advance that my choices will be personal and therefore perhaps idiosyncratic.

I may be taking quite a risk as the year proceeds - I have little doubt that many of you will disagree with my selections from more recent decades, and will tell me so! For the earlier years things are somewhat simpler. Firstly, with a few exceptions, those who presented and heard the papers are no longer alive to challenge me. Secondly there are fewer to choose from. In the decade 1950 to 1959 only 91 papers were presented at RA meetings, but in the years 2000 to 2009 there were 3,053. So the range of choice varies somewhat!

The 1950s

The Renal Association meetings of the 1950s were utterly different from our contemporary annual conference. A small group of physicians, surgeons, and scientists interested in the kidney would gather for an afternoon in central London to listen to scientific papers.

Remember that nephrology did not exist as a speciality, indeed the term ‘nephrology’ only began to be popularised in the 1950s. Try also to picture a clinical world which has none of the following – effective diuretics, tolerable and effective antihypertensives, forms of vitamin D effective in kidney disease, immunosuppressives other than cortisone and irradiation, dialysis [except briefly in a few places for acute renal failure], kidney transplantation [except in identical twins]. And of course no molecular or cell biology.

The topics of papers in the 1950s reflect their era,: one third were on normal renal structure and function, and another quarter on tubular pathophysiology. Most were studies of whole organisms rather than using in vitro approaches.

In the 1950s our archive is not quite complete, so that for some papers we have only the title, but no abstract. This means I could not for example select two tantalising papers from 1952 for which there is only a title – ‘One hundred cases of anuria, personally treated’ & ‘The treatment of nephrotic oedema’.

So I have chosen:
January 2010:

Nephrotic proteinuria: a tubular lesion
T Freeman & A M Joekes [1956]

February 2010:

The excretion of indolic acids and its relation to Hartnup disease
MD Milne [1959]

March 2010:

Presentation and Powerpoint, Evolution of Dialysis in the United Kingdom 1956 to 2006, as presented at the RA Brighton Conference 2007.

Click here to view video.

April 2010:

A controlled trial of treatment for steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome
JF Soothill, PN McLaine, DG Cottom, OH Wolf [1967]

May 2010:

Plasma-exchange and immunosuppression in the treatment of Goodpasture's syndrome
C.M. Lockwood, A.J. Rees, Pamela Ewan, D.K. Peters and C.B. Wilson [1976]

June 2010:

A prospective randomised trial of operative versus non-operative management of severe vesico-ureteric reflux: Two year follow-up of 96 children
The Birmingham Reflux Study Group: R. Astley, R.C. Clark, J.J. Corkery, P. Gornall, G.E. Knox, K.J. Shah, C.M. Taylor, R.H.R. White and M.H. Winterborn [1982]

The treatment of anaemia in haemodialysis patients with recombinant D.N.A derived human erythropoietin (r-HuEPO)
C.G. Winnearls, D.O. Oliver, M.J. Pippard, C. Reid and P. Mary Cotes [1986]

July 2010:

Glomerular mesangial cells (MC) ingest human neutrophils (PMN) undergoing apoptosis
J. Savill, J. Smith, F. Abbott and A. Rees [1991]

The Renal Registry and a Preliminary Analysis of performance compared with Renal Association Standards
S. Armstrong, D. Ansell, T. Feest and P. Roderick [1997]

August 2010:

A new urinary space within the glomerulus? 3-D reconstruction from Electron micrograph reveals a significant restrictive sub-podocyte space
C.R. Neal, D. O. Bates and S. J. Harper [2003]

Haemodialysis induced myocardial stunning is associated with a reduced 12-month survival
J. O. Burton, S. Korsheed, H. J. Jeffries, C. W. McIntyre [2008]

Downloads

  1. A Prospective randomised trial of operative versus non-operative management of severe vesico-ureteric reflux
    .pdf file (191.28 KB)
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  2. A new urinary space within the glomerulus. 3-D reconstruction from Electron
    .pdf file (69.01 KB)
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  3. A controlled trial of treatment for steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome
    .pdf file (78.56 KB)
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  4. The Renal Registry and a Preliminary Analysis of performance compared with Renal Association Standards
    .pdf file (74.53 KB)
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  5. The treatment of anaemia in haemodialysis patients with recombinant D.N.A derived Human Erythropoietin (r-HuEPO)
    .pdf file (160.47 KB)
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  6. Plasma-exchange and immunosuppression in the treatment of Goodpasture’s syndrome
    .pdf file (80.18 KB)
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  7. Glomerular mesangial cells (MC) ingest human neutrophils (PMN) undergoing apoptosis
    .pdf file (76.13 KB)
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  8. Haemodialysis induced myocardial stunning is assoicated with a reduced 12-month survival
    .pdf file (83.03 KB)
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  9. Nephrotic proteinuria - a tubular lesion
    .pdf file (94.01 KB)
    T Freeman & A M Joekes [1956]
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  10. The excretion of indolic acids and its relation to Hartnup disease
    .pdf file (80.83 KB)
    Download