The Spectrum of Mineral and Bone Disorders in Chronic Kidney Disease

Klaus Olgaard is Professor of Nephrology and Internal Medicine at the University of Copenhagen and at Department of Nephrology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. His scientific interests are basic and clinical research in nephrology-endocrinology and uremia, especially related to physiology and pathophysiology of calcium, phosphorus, parathyroid hormone (PTH), PTH related peptide, vitamin D, renal osteodystrophy, vascular calcifications and post-transplant bone disease. Professor Olgaard was the President for the ERA-EDTA Congress held in Copenhagen in 2002. He is Past President of several national nephrology and transplantation societies including the Danish Society of Nephrology. He is subject editor for Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, and has been a member of several editorial boards. Professor Olgaard has authored more than 210 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and was editor of the K/DIGO guidelines, 2006 on Bone and Mineral Metabolism in CKD. Justin Silver is Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School and Chief of the Nephrology and Hypertension Services at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. He is Director of the Minerva Center for Calcium and Bone Metabolism at Hadassah Hospital. Together with his colleague Tally Naveh-Many Ph.D. He studies the molecular biology of the parathyroid and in particular the pathophysiology of the secondary hyperparathyroidism of chronic renal failure. In ongoing work in their laboratory they study how calcium and phosphate regulate PTH gene expression. Professor Silver has published more than 160 papers and reviews on this and related fields, including fifteen book chapters. Isidro B. Salusky is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the Director of UCLA General Clinical Research Center, Director of the Pediatric Dialysis Program and Associate Dean for Clinical Research. Dr Salusky and his colleagues have made substantial contributions to the understanding and treatment of the bone and mineral abnormalities associated with chronic kidney disease in children. They have characterized the spectrum of renal osteodystrophy in paediatric patients as well as the effects of therapy with different vitamin D sterols. One of the seminal contributions was identification of vascular calcifications in children and young adults treated with dialysis. More recently, his work is focused on the specific actions of fibroblast growth factor 23(FGF-23) on bone and in the pathogenesis of chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD).