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Pruritus: Is there a grain of salty truth?
Author(s) -
Penny Jarrin D.,
Salerno Fabio R.,
Akbari Alireza,
McIntyre Christopher W.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
hemodialysis international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.658
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1542-4758
pISSN - 1492-7535
DOI - 10.1111/hdi.12885
Subject(s) - medicine , hemodialysis , dialysis , kidney disease , population , sodium , peritoneal dialysis , pathophysiology , intensive care medicine , surgery , gastroenterology , chemistry , environmental health , organic chemistry
Hemodialysis patients characteristically suffer from a range of unpleasant symptoms. Uremic pruritus effects close to half of the chronic kidney disease population, reducing quality of life and associated with increased mortality. Its pathophysiology though is poorly understood; currently deployed therapeutic approaches are ineffective. Excessive levels of skin and soft tissue sodium accumulate in dialysis patients, producing a range of biological consequences, including inflammation. We report an index case of a hemodialysis patient with debilitating pruritus and extreme levels of tissue sodium, measured with Sodium‐23 magnetic resonance imaging. Both the tissue sodium loading and pruritus responded fully to initiation of expanded hemodialysis therapy with a recently introduced medium cutoff dialysis membrane‐based dialyzer.