Ray Harris, M.D., has been elected president of the American Society of Nephrology during the society’s annual meeting, ASN Kidney Week 2015, in San Diego.

A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists are closer to understanding why COX-2 inhibitors — drugs that relieve arthritis pain and inflammation without the gastrointestinal side effects of other painkillers — cause heart problems in some patients. Now

Vanderbilt University researchers have come closer to solving a mystery that has puzzled scientists for more than a century: after the loss of one kidney, what causes the growth of the remaining kidney to take up the slack?

Diabetic nephropathy, or kidney disease caused by diabetes, is a major source of morbidity and mortality. In the United States, more than 30 percent of patients receiving either dialytic therapy or renal transplantation have end stage renal disease as a result of diabetic nephropathy.

Kidney disease is the eighth most common cause of death in the United States and affects more than 20 million people, yet many people don’t know they have kidney disease because it often develops very slowly and with minimal symptoms. For this reason, kidney disease is often referred to as a silent killer.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, committed to providing multiple options to patients who have kidney disease, recently began offering nocturnal in-center hemodialysis, which allows patients to receive treatment at night while they sleep.

The kidney can mediate its own repair through proliferation of resident immune system cells.