Search

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is highly prevalent in chronic kidney disease, suggesting that molecules retained in uremia might contribute to this increased risk. We explored the relationship between p-cresol, a protein-bound uremic retention solute, and CVD by comparing the strength of this relationship relative to traditional and novel cardiovascular risk factors. Univariate Cox proportional hazard analysis showed that the free serum p-cresol concentration was significantly associated with CVD when the primary end point was the time to the first cardiovascular event. In multivariate analysis, free p-cresol was significantly associated with CVD in non-diabetics. In diabetic patients, however, a significant relationship between p-cresol and cardiovascular events could not be demonstrated despite their having significantly higher p-cresol levels. Our study shows that free p-cresol is a novel cardiovascular risk factor in non-diabetic hemodialysis patients.Kidney International (2008) 73, 1174–1180; doi:10.1038/ki.2008.31; published online 27 February 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a letter to the editor commenting on a paper suggesting that the decreased antioxidant capacity of plasma ultrafiltrate is related to the removal of protein-bound uremic toxins.