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Nomenclature for kidney function and disease: executive summary from a KDIGO consensus conference

An obligation of medical journals is the responsible, professional and expeditious delivery of knowledge from researchers and practitioners to the community. The task of editors, therefore, rests not merely in selecting what to publish, but in judging how it might best be communicated. The challenge of improving descriptions of kidney function and disease in medical publishing was the impetus for a KDIGO consensus conference. The conference goals included standardizing and refining kidney-related nomenclature and developing a glossary to be used by journals.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Juhi Chaudhari, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, for assistance with manuscript preparation before submission. The conference was sponsored by KDIGO and was in part supported by unrestricted educational grants from AstraZeneca, Bayer HealthCare, Boehringer Ingelheim, Fresenius Medical Care, Roche and Sanofi. The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the organizations or journals that were represented at the conference. Responsibility for the information and views expressed is limited to the coauthors. Note that this Comment article is being published concurrently in multiple journals and serves as an executive summary of the full report published in Kidney International (Levey, A. et al. Kidney Int. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.kint.2020.02.010 (2020)). These articles cover identical concepts but vary in minor stylistic and spelling changes, detail and length of manuscript, in keeping with each journal’s style. Excerpts are adapted with permission of KDIGO and the International Society of Nephrology.

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Correspondence to Andrew S. Levey or Kai-Uwe Eckardt.

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A.S.L. has received research support from AstraZeneca, NIDDK and NKF. K.U.E. has received consultancy fees from Akebia, Bayer and Genzyme; speaker honoraria from Bayer and Vifor; and research support from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Fresenius Medical Care and Genzyme. N.M.D. has equity ownership/stock options from Eli Lilly & Co. M.J. has received consultancy fees from Astellas, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, MSD and Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma; speaker honoraria from Abbvie, Amgen, Menarini, MSD and Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma; travel support from Amgen; and research support from Alexion, Amgen, Janssen-Cilag, Otsuka and Roche. W.C.W. has received consultancy fees from Akebia, AMAG, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Daiichi-Sankyo, Relypsa and ZS Pharma; speaker honoraria from FibroGen; and research support from NIH. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Levey, A.S., Eckardt, KU., Dorman, N.M. et al. Nomenclature for kidney function and disease: executive summary from a KDIGO consensus conference. Nat Rev Nephrol 16, 427–428 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-020-0290-9

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