U.K. Scientists Study Acute Infection in ESRD Patients

CARDIFF, U.K.—A new research study being conducted at Cardiff University could help decrease the rates of treatment failure among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD).

Experts in the Infection, Immunity and Inflammation Interdisciplinary Research Group at the School of Medicine have secured more than $375,000 from the Renal Discoveries-The Baxter Extramural Grant program to investigate the potential to safeguard susceptible patients against serious problems caused by bacterial infections.

Bacterial infection among patients with ESRD is one of the major reasons for treatment failure and mortality, particularly among patients receiving peritoneal dialysis, the form of dialysis that cleans the blood inside the body through the peritoneum.

The 3-year grant allows researchers to study the consequence of infection by bacteria in order to understand, and in the future better regulate, a patient's immune response to infections. The team brings together clinicians and researchers at the Peritoneal Dialysis Unit, the Institute of Nephrology, and the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Immunology.

Matthias Eberl, MD, principal investigator at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Immunology, said, "Although peritoneal dialysis has a number of advantages such as independence from hospital and improved quality of life, infections still pose major risks to the patient. As treatment failure in these patients correlates directly with the severity of the inflammatory response and antibiotic resistance is becoming a significant problem, we need to understand why some patients are more prone to treatment failure than others."

The grant also includes a 3-year visiting fellowship for a peritoneal dialysis specialist from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan. Chan-Yu Lin, MD, will conduct his PhD studies at Cardiff University on peritoneal dialysis-related infections and receive training in early treatment of inflammation, microbiological diagnosis, and analysis of patient samples in the laboratory.