On 2014 Nov 21, Swapnil Hiremath commented:

This study was discussed on Nov 4th 2014 in the open online nephrology journal club, #NephJC, on twitter. Introductory explanatory comments, written by Dr Susan Steigerwalt, are available at the NephJC website. It was an interesting discussion, which served partly to explain the experiments to the non-scientists in the chat, and partly to critique the study itself. It had more than 20 participants, including nephrologists, physiologists, basic scientists and nephrology fellows. A transcript and a curated (i.e. Storified) version of the tweetchat are available from the NephJC website. The highlights of the tweetchat were:

• The investigators have been pursuing this research area (the immune systems and hypertension) over many years, and report here exhaustive and meticulous experiments, including multiple animal models and human data.

• This group identified a novel connection between the production of isoketals (or isolevuglandins) in dendritic cells leading to isoketal-modified proteins which in turn activate T cells and promote hypertension.

• Though these findings were greeted with a lot of interest, the results do need to be independently replicated; additionally, the exact biological mechanisms, including the mechanism of T cell activation and resultant alteration in either vascular function or sodium homeostasis, need to be elucidated further. However, these results could lead to novel therapies exploiting the immune system for therapeutic benefit in hypertension and resultant end organ damage.

Interested individuals can track and join in the conversation by following @NephJC or #NephJC, or visit the webpage at NephJC.com.

On 2014 Nov 21, Swapnil Hiremath commented:

This study was discussed on Nov 4th 2014 in the open online nephrology journal club, #NephJC, on twitter. Introductory explanatory comments, written by Dr Susan Steigerwalt, are available at the NephJC website. It was an interesting discussion, which served partly to explain the experiments to the non-scientists in the chat, and partly to critique the study itself. It had more than 20 participants, including nephrologists, physiologists, basic scientists and nephrology fellows. A transcript and a curated (i.e. Storified) version of the tweetchat are available from the NephJC website. The highlights of the tweetchat were:

• The investigators have been pursuing this research area (the immune systems and hypertension) over many years, and report here exhaustive and meticulous experiments, including multiple animal models and human data.

• This group identified a novel connection between the production of isoketals (or isolevuglandins) in dendritic cells leading to isoketal-modified proteins which in turn activate T cells and promote hypertension.

• Though these findings were greeted with a lot of interest, the results do need to be independently replicated; additionally, the exact biological mechanisms, including the mechanism of T cell activation and resultant alteration in either vascular function or sodium homeostasis, need to be elucidated further. However, these results could lead to novel therapies exploiting the immune system for therapeutic benefit in hypertension and resultant end organ damage.

Interested individuals can track and join in the conversation by following @NephJC or #NephJC, or visit the webpage at NephJC.com.