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Background. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a recognized global health problem. While some CKD patients remain stable after initial diagnosis, others can rapidly progress towards end-stage renal disease (ESRD). This makes biomarkers capable of detecting progressive forms of CKD extremely valuable, especially in non-invasive biofluids such as urine. Screening for metabolite markers using non-targeted metabolomic techniques like nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is increasingly applied to CKD research.Methods. A cohort of CKD patients (n = 227) with estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFRs) ranging from 9.4-130 mL/min/1.73 m(2) was Devaluated and urine metabolite profiles were characterized in relation to declining eGFR. Nested in this cohort, a retrospective subset (n = 57) was investigated for prognostic metabolite markers of CKD progression, independent of baseline eGFR. A transcriptomic analysis of murine models of renal failure was performed to validate selected metabolomic findings.Results. General linear modeling revealed 11 urinary metabolites with significant associations to reduced eGFR. Linear modelling specifically showed that increased urine concentrations of betaine (P < 0.05) and myo-inositol (P < 0.05) are significant prognostic markers of CKD progression.Conclusions. Renal organic osmolytes, betaine and myoinositol play a critical role in protecting renal cells from hyperosmotic stress. Kidney tissue transcriptomics of murine preclinical experimentation identified decreased expression of Slc6a12 and Slc5a11 mRNA in renal tissue consistent with defective tubular transport of these osmolytes. Imbalances in renal osmolyte regulation lead to increased renal cell damage and thus more progressive forms of CKD. Increases in renal osmolytes in urine could provide clinical diagnostic and prognostic information on CKD outcomes.

The service sector is closely related with the technology developments and consequently the access to services, their provision, and consumption are optimized. The banking industry is no exception to it. It is strongly influenced by technology developments and tries to meet new challenges and thus to develop further itself. Particularly affected and being put under increasing pressure are the core banking businesses—accounts and payments. Their central element is the money that has experienced a change in its form of existence over time. Money (same as many other goods and services) were being digitized and its value were being transferred to plastic card and lately mobile phones (PPP (paper—plastic—phone) evolution of money). Along with the technological developments comes both the socio-demographic shifts and changes in the legal environment. On the other hand, opportunities for new participants (other than banks) on the (cashless) payment market are opening up and with it the position of the banks on the payment market is threatened. Due to the fact that banks are very much impacted by the developments in technology and they count among the heaviest investors in information technology, this paper will attempt to provide valuable insight into how the banks implement or could implement the new (mobile) technologies and the smartphone. Further, this paper comprises three aspects of our contemporary society: the importance of the tertiary sector of the economy—services in the developed countries, the development of new (mobile) technologies, and the high penetration rate and acceptance of “the device” of the contemporary history—the smartphone. The aim of this work is to translate these three aspects into the banking service sector in Austria (with a focus on the payments).

Background An improvement in the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of chronic kidney disease patients has been an underestimated clinical outcome. Although this may be considered as an unexpected disease course, it may provide some insights into possible mechanisms underlying disease remission and/or regression. Therefore, our aim was to identify urinary peptide biomarkers associated with an improvement in estimated GFR (eGFR) over time and to improve patient stratification. Methods Capillary electrophoresis coupled with mass spectrometry (CE-MS) was employed to evaluate the urine peptidome of patients with different types of renal diseases. In total, 376 patients with a slope/year between -1.5% and +1.5% were designated as non-progressors or stable, while 177 patients with a > 5% slope/year were designated as patients with an improved eGFR for state-of-art biomarker discovery and validation. Results We detected 384 significant peptide fragments by comparing the CE-MS data of the stable patients and those with improved renal function in our development cohort. Of these 384, a set of 141 peptides with available amino acid sequence information were used to generate a support vector machine-based classification panel. The biomarker panel was applied to our validation cohort, achieving a moderate area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.85 (81% sensitivity and 81% specificity). The majority of the peptides (78%) from the diagnostic panel arose from different types of collagen. Conclusions We have developed a panel of urinary peptide markers able to discriminate those patients predisposed to improve their kidney function over time and possibly be treated with more specific or less aggressive therapy.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a prevalent cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. A hallmark of CKD progression is renal fibrosis characterized by excessive accumulation of extracelular matrix (ECM) proteins. In this study, we aimed to investigate the correlation of the es_ESurinary proteome classifier CKD273 and individual urinary peptides with the degree of fibrosis. In total, 42 kidney biopsies and urine samples were examined. The percentage of fibrosis per total tissue area was assessed in Masson trichrome stained kidney tissues. The urinary proteome was analysed by capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry. CKD273 displayed a significant and positive correlation with the degree of fibrosis (Rho = 0.430, P = 0.0044), while the routinely used parameters (glomerular filtration rate, urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio and urine protein-to-creatinine ratio) did not (Rho = −0.222; −0.137; −0.070 and P = 0.16; 0.39; 0.66, respectively). We identified seven fibrosis-associated peptides displaying a significant and negative correlation with the degree of fibrosis. All peptides were collagen fragments, suggesting that these may be causally related to the observed accumulation of ECM in the kidneys. CKD273 and specific peptides are significantly associated with kidney fibrosis; such an association could not be detected by other biomarkers for CKD. These non-invasive fibrosis-related biomarkers can potentially be implemented in future trials, The research presented in this manuscript was supported in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 642937 (RENALTRACT; MSCA-ITN-2014-642937) and by the “Clinical and system-omics for the identification of the Molecular Determinants of established Chronic Kidney Disease” (iMode-CKD, PEOPLE-ITN-GA-2013-608332). AO was supported by Intensificacion ISCIII and RETIC REDINREN RD016/0009 FEDER funds; MDSN was supported by Miguel Servet program

Idiopathic glomerulonephritis (GN), such as membranous glomerulonephritis, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), and IgA nephropathy (IgAN), represent the most frequent primary glomerular kidney diseases (GKDs) worldwide. Although the renal biopsy currently remains the gold standard for the routine diagnosis of idiopathic GN, the invasiveness and diagnostic difficulty related with this procedure highlight the strong need for new diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to be translated into less invasive diagnostic tools. MALDI-MS imaging MALDI-MSI was applied to fresh-frozen bioptic renal tissue from patients with a histological diagnosis of FSGS (n = 6), IgAN, (n = 6) and membranous glomerulonephritis (n = 7), and from controls (n = 4) in order to detect specific molecular signatures of primary glomerulonephritis. MALDI-MSI was able to generate molecular signatures capable to distinguish between normal kidney and pathological GN, with specific signals (m/z 4025, 4048, and 4963) representing potential indicators of chronic kidney disease development. Moreover, specific disease-related signatures (m/z 4025 and 4048 for FSGS, m/z 4963 and 5072 for IgAN) were detected. Of these signals, m/z 4048 was identified as ?-1-antitrypsin and was shown to be localized to the podocytes within sclerotic glomeruli by immunohistochemistry. ?-1-Antitrypsin could be one of the markers of podocyte stress that is correlated with the development of FSGS due to both an excessive loss and a hypertrophy of podocytes.? 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The paper comprises three aspects of our contemporary society: the importance of the tertiary sector of the economy - services in the developed countries, the development of new (mobile) technologies and the high penetration rate as well as an acceptance of “the device” in contemporary history - smartphone. The aim of this work is to translate these three aspects into the banking service sector in Austria with a focus on the payments. Due to the fact that banks are much impacted by developments in new ICT technologies, and they are among the heaviest investors in IT, this paper attempts to provide an insight of how the banks implement or could implement new (mobile) technologies and end-devices such as the smartphones, and how it can influence banking services in general.