Sergio Dellepiane

The FDA has refused to accept an application from Moderna to review its first mRNA seasonal flu vaccine, the company said, in another setback for the technology that’s been a target of some Trump administration health officials. https://cnn.it/4kt8iyn

I just submitted a review for a Nephrology Journal, likely Tier 3. I was one of 4, and I suppose that the editor read it too. Do we really need so many people for each article? Isn’t that a part of the peer review crisis?

I think a big part of CKD-EPI 2021 inaccuracy is not about creatinine being such a bad marker. Is the incredible assumption that all bodies are roughly the same.. why not including weight and height?

I love Substack but sometimes I miss reading sharp-to-the-point threads 🧵 instead of 25 pages articles.

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead” B. Pascal AKA synthesis is valuable and hard

Our large kidney transcriptomic dataset of #ANCA #glomerulonephritis is now publicly available (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/ac...). Used to describe a strong renal interferon signature and a prognosis signature outperforming current classifications (links below). I hope it will be useful! 🚀

Great to see a field being so open and forward about the issue. Great to see traditional journals (and not only the blogs and the websites - who did a great job!) facing the challenge.

Confused about how much protein you should be eating? Here’s what the science says.

Big data nephrologists. I keep reading and reviewing articles where “patients with missing baseline creatinine had it imputed based on eGFR of 60”. Can we please stop? What’s the meaning of assessing kidney outcomes after random assignment of baseline GFR? Just drop them.

The native human glomerulus features a slit diaphragm resembling a densely interwoven fishnet

Here, Achilleas S. Frangakis & team resolve a specialized component of the kidney’s filtration barrier across the extracellular space at the nanometer scale: doi.org/10.1172/jci....

The man who showed the world that GN are curable just left us. Farewell Prof Ponticelli.

Amazing article. Thanks! I don’t understand the strategy though. If the new starfishes aren’t resistant to the Vibrio, won’t the next spread wipe them all out again?

Soaring gold becomes top ‘Trump trade’ US president’s tariff threats have helped bullion to string of record highs

6. ...and gold and European stocks rallied

Soaring gold becomes top ‘Trump trade’
www.ft.com/content/fb53...

European stocks outpace Wall Street since Donald Trump took office
www.ft.com/content/3436...

Watch who you’re calling childless Women in America are having as many babies over their lifetimes as they did two decades ago

Striking! After years of natality doomsday data the Economist points out how we might have looked at the wrong metric. In US births are stable to 1.97 kids per woman! Likely less so in other countries

Watch who you’re calling childless
economist.com/finance-and-...
from The Economist

Seven feel-good science stories to restore your faith in 2025 Immense progress in gene-editing, drug discovery and conservation are just some of the reasons to be cheerful about 2025.

Seven feel-good science stories to round up 2025. All too often we forget to celebrate the positives
🧪
#AcademicSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Did they really call
SURPASS a non-inferiority trial? Technically is more of a tie

Isn’t it amazing that China leaves Europe in the dust on EVs yet the EU policy response is to be more lenient on regulating combustion engine car emissions?

John Burn-Murdoch is an amazing journalist. He has incredible depth and knowledge, his analyses are illuminating and always relevant

No, unless you have a disease that is treated by them

This is clearly biased. And you are right, no one would ever found a 0.5-1bln 3yr trial to compare a “blockbuster” to a drug without similar indications and off patent. What can be done by academics are mechanisms trials with outcomes like UPCR, Na excretion, BP and CKD progression markers

Reduction of Antihypertensive Treatment in Nursing Home Residents | NEJM Among older adults with frailty, evidence on the benefits and risks of discontinuing antihypertensive drugs is limited. In a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial conducted in France, we assign...

Reducing blood pressure pills in frail elderly patients did not improve mortality

Or.. flipped argument

Reducing pill burden associated with same outcomes

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

I’m reading about Gene and her difficulties in expressing herself.. great book. Nice storytelling and fluent writing. The cat loves it too

Geothermal’s time has finally come This source of energy could become bigger than nuclear

This is the future. Cheap, clean, stable. I never thought that solar could ever prevent more than 30-40% of the emissions. Here there is a 100% potential

Geothermal’s time has finally come
economist.com/interactive/...
from The Economist

Advice on how to be miserable: the key is insecure selfishness

Piccola nota: le case farmaceutiche in Italia producono ma non sviluppano farmaci. La prima è un’attività relativamente poco costosa (centinaia di milioni) e con minor intensità di ricerca. La seconda è la chiave dell’innovazione, muove miliardi e (con pochissime eccezioni) se n’è andata da decenni

I remember practicing in Italy and writing 12-page discharge summaries addressed to the PCP. The patient was used as mail delivery system. One day I read a Swedish 1 page letter starting: “Dear Ms Xxx you were diagnosed with a kidney infection, what does that mean?..”

First new type of malaria treatment in decades shows promise against drug resistance If approved, GanLum could be available within a year and a half, according to maker.

Promising results from a new malaria drug offer hope against emerging drug resistance in Africa. In a clinical trial, ganaplacide–lumefantrine (GanLum) cured 97.4% of participants, outperforming an existing treatment, which cured 94%.

go.nature.com/3WTGxnx

Rare genetic variants confer a high risk of ADHD and implicate neuronal biology - Nature An analysis of rare genetic variants identifies three genes—MAP1A, ANO8 and ANK2—that have a role in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and investigates the potential underlying biological mechanisms.

Nature research paper: Rare genetic variants confer a high risk of ADHD and implicate neuronal biology

go.nature.com/3LARwjy

You never heard of it also because they change its name every 2 years

Eicosapentaenoic Acid for Cardiovascular Events Reduction- Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials - PubMed Our analyses demonstrate that although EPA supplementation lowers risk of coronary revascularization more than other oils, there may not be a benefit relative to standard of care. Further, EPA reduces the risk of cardiovascular events only in comparison to mineral oil and not when compared with othe …

Looking at this meta analysis:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35914996/

Quite the same conclusions, just the effect size is very different

Likely under-dosing. The successful CV trials increased from the classic 0.3-0.5g of EPA to >1g if I remember correctly. Here they gave several grams. Maybe that’s why? Maybe there is something really different in dialysis? 2/2