Patients and Samples

Coordinator:		PD Dr. Heike Bruck / PD Dr. Stefan Herget-Rosenthal
Institution:		Universitätsklinikum Essen / Universität Duisburg Essen
Homepage:		www. uk-essen.de/nephrologie

The Department of Nephrology at the University Hospital of Essen will recruit about 300 patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 3-5 (according to the K/DOQI-classification) including patients on dialysis and control subjects with or without cardiovascular disease for the ‘NTCVD-Register’. All subjects will be characterized and followed up over 3 years regarding kidney function as well as cardiovascular events and surrogate parameters by the help of non-invasive testing and blood and urine analysis.
All subjects pass the following study program before inclusion and 1 and 2 years later: medical history, physical examination, collecting of blood and urine samples for 'routine laboratory' (for determination of severity of renal and cardiovacsular disease and risk profile), collecting of blood and urine samples for 'study laboratory' (for analysis of biomarkers and uremic toxines), and non-invasive tests to determine cardiovascular status (e.g. ECG, stress-ECG, echokardiography, blood pressure, ankle-brachial-index, intima-media-thickness, pulse-wave-analysis). Findings of medical history, physical examination, routine laboratory and cardiovascular testing are transferred into an electronic data base.
This longitudinal approach aims to analyze the impact of recently identified mediators of cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease by biochemical methods like bioassays and pattern-analysis as well as to isolate mediators and biomarkers of cardiovascular disease and to determine their diagnostic and prognostic value especially in CKD-patients.