Low-protein diets in chronic kidney disease: are we finally reaching a consensus?

, we hope to find concordance between the clinical and molecular events that occur in LN. Molecular characterization of renal lesions present in LN will provide clinicians the tools necessary to more accurately classify disease, predict outcomes and appropriately apply novel therapeutics. 1. Weening JJ, D'Agati VD, Schwartz MM et al. The classification of glomer-ulonephritis in systemic lupus erythematosus revisited. A quantitative proteomic work-flow for characterization of frozen clinical biopsies: laser capture microdis-section coupled with label-free mass spectrometry. Statistical analysis of differential gene expression relative to a fold change threshold on NanoString data of mouse odorant receptor genes. BMC Bioinformatics 2014; 15: 39 10. Peterson KS, Huang JF, Zhu J et al. Characterization of heterogeneity in the molecular pathogenesis of lupus nephritis from transcriptional profiles of laser-captured glomeruli. Identification of stage specific genes associated with lupus nephritis and response to remission induction in NZB/W and NZM2410 mice. diseases using proteomic analysis of laser capture microdissected glom-eruli. In the history of medical sciences, few topics have been the focus of so many clinical trials, reviews/speculation, conference proceedings (Figure 1) and discussions than the question of what constitutes an optimal protein intake for patients with kidney diseases. Indeed, clinical evaluations from 1869 plus experimental investigations from the 1930s concluded that excess dietary protein adversely affected the symptoms of patients or the survival of uraemic rats [1, 2]. Such reports led to creative efforts in the 1940s to design regiments like the egg-potato diet based on meals that were poor in the amount of proteins for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The goal was to reduce uraemic symptoms because dialysis was not an imaginable treatment for patients with CKD. Besides lowering the levels of uraemic products, new benefits