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We investigated the effect of two dosing regimens of oral iron on iron status and hematological parameters in patients with CKD. In this single center, open label, randomized, active controlled clinical trial, stable adult patients with CKD stage G3–4 with percentage transferrin saturation (%TSAT) ≤ 30% and serum ferritin ≤ 500 ng/ml were eligible. Participants were randomized to receive either 100 mg of ferrous ascorbate once daily (OD group) or 100 mg of ferrous ascorbate twice daily (BD group, total daily dose 200 mg). The primary outcome was change in %TSAT between groups over 12 weeks. The secondary outcomes were changes in other iron status and hematological parameters, serum interleukin-6 (IL-6) and hepcidin. 80 participants were enrolled out of which 76 completed the study. Change in %TSAT was not significantly different between groups (β = − 1.43, 95% CI − 3.99 to 1.12, BD group as reference). The rise in serum ferritin was less in the OD group as compared to BD group (β = − 0.36, 95% CI − 0.61 to − 0.10) whereas MCHC increased in the OD group as compared to decrease in the BD group (β = 0.37, 95% CI 0.067–0.67). These observations need exploration to ascertain the impact of different oral iron dosing strategies in CKD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ectopically expressed olfactory receptors (ORs) have been linked with multiple clinically-relevant physiological processes. Previously used tissue-level expression estimation largely shadowed the potential role of ORs due to their overall low expression levels. Even after the introduction of the single-cell transcriptomics, a comprehensive delineation of expression dynamics of ORs in tumors remained unexplored. Our targeted investigation into single malignant cells revealed a complex landscape of combinatorial OR expression events. We observed differentiation-dependent decline in expressed OR counts per cell as well as their expression intensities in malignant cells. Further, we constructed expression signatures based on a large spectrum of ORs and tracked their enrichment in bulk expression profiles of tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). TCGA tumor samples stratified based on OR-centric signatures exhibited divergent survival probabilities. In summary, our comprehensive analysis positions ORs at the cross-road of tumor cell differentiation status and cancer prognosis. Through analyses of olfactory receptors in single-cell RNA sequencing dataset from different cancers, Kalra, Mittal et al. find that the number and expression levels of olfactory receptors vary by differentiation status. The study provides insights into an under-appreciated role for olfactory receptors in cancer pathogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]