Climbing to the top - Kidney Camp 2013

"Kidney" CAMP!

The FASEB Science Research Conference on "Renal Hemodynamics: Integrating with the nephron and beyond" took place last week at Vermont Academy in Saxton's River, VT. The meetings were previously called Summer Research Conferences, but they changed that to the quite strange "science research" that sounds more like a branch of philosophy to me.

Anyway, we still call it by its proper name: Summer Kidney Camp. It is a summer camp where spouses send their kidney physiologist halves to wear them out and enable at least a semblance of normal conversation during the rest of the summer. I'm guessing that doesn't work out as well as they hoped in much the same way as summer camp for kids don't.

The Kidney Camp is held every three years, and has a tendency to return to Saxton's River, even if it has been held in other locations once or twice. The main feature is the afternoon-break where we do important sciency stuff, like sitting in the grass, playing softball, football (proper football), basketball, and top rope climbing (which, by the way, is awesome). As far as I can tell most attendees only play sports once every three years for reasons unknown to science, and quite dangerous to be honest. The climbing was probably the safest activity.

The evenings are filled with more science. The fiercely competitive talent show, which was won by one of the supporting acts. The collaborative table tennis, and the very novel fussball table (rumor has it the last one broke three years ago) where any argument can be settled with a well timed spinning of the rods.

Then we have billiards, which makes you look better, but only until you pop the cue-ball off the table. Aaron, who is posing for illustrative purposes only, never did. I promise. Honestly.

In between these important scientific sessions there were some other stuff, where a lot of actual science was actually discussed. Some six to eight hours of lectures per day, and the best poster session in the field. Not only because it is the poster session with a bar that serves local micro-brewery beer, but also because the bar keeps people at the posters and everyone, even invited speakers, bring posters. Luckily it is three years to the next meeting so that I, and my liver, can recover.

Winter-meeting in Oslo

The Norwegian Hypertension Society held its bi-annual scientific meeting in Oslo last week. It was a long time in planning. We set the place and date about two years ago. Sent the first announcement in the spring of 2012 and the call for abstracts in September. Then, at the very deadline, the abstracts and registrations start to trickle in. As with all meetings, we pushed the submission-deadline back a week just to allow people without basic planning skills with pressed schedules to join the meeting and present their data. Then, in as little time as possible, all the abstracts have to be formatted into a program, and session-chairs has to be found and matched so that they have an interest but aren't speaking themselves.

Anyway, we got some 17 free communications, varying from experimental physiology to international research politics, but with a heavy focus on epidemiology and clinical research. There were a couple of talks on the recently very hot topic of renal sympathetic denervation for treatment-resistant hypertension (more on that in another post), some interesting sub-group analyses from the LIFE and SCAST studies, and follow-ups on the now 40-year-old Oslo-Ischemia-Study. More of the program at the society home-page.

In addition, we had two invited lectures on statistics in clinical research. The first on how to develop and validate prognostic models by Ingar Holme, and the second on over-adjustment bias in multiple regression models held by Knut Liestøl. It was a useful repetition of the uses and pitfalls of these two very similar kinds of models that require very different study-designs and give very different information in the end. A common problem is that one tries to get etiological information from prognostic research, i.e. treating a risk-factor as a cause for the chosen end-point even though the observational design makes that impossible. The converse is equally common, i.e. trying to infer prognostic information from etiological studies, such as clinical trials, where the highly selected population makes general conclusions very suspect.

All told, it was a very successful meeting, well worth the time both for planning it, and attending.

Conference-season 2012

For conference-season this year I have two major meetings planned. I have done my share of extra time in the A&E during Easter to be able to go without using up my vacation. First, I am bringing two students to Experimental Biology in San Diego. Then, I am going to London for the 22nd annual meeting of the European Society of Hypertension where I have to present my data myself.

This year both societies are providing iPhone apps with the program: EB2012 and iESH2012. The Experimental Biology is actually available for Android as well. The EB-App works brilliantly, while the ESH-App shows nothing what so ever at the moment. The screen-captures in the app-store looks promising, so I understand it as if the App will be some kind of live-update thingy. That does not really help me now when I try to plan ahead.

Using the brilliant round-trip planner kayak.se I even managed to book a round-trip flight so that I do not have to go back to Sweden in-between or something equally stupid.

Having spent all my time in the A&E and helping put together the posters for EB, I am hopelessly behind in constructing my own poster. If I had had a talk it would have been much simpler. Then I could have kept preparing and changing it until the last minute, or at least the day before. Now I have to have time to print it before-hand.

So, maybe I should not sit here blogging. I will, however, try to report something from the meetings once I am there.

Non-report from the scientific meeting of the Norwegian Hypertension Society

In the Norwegian Hypertension Society (no: Norsk hypertensjonsforening) we have two major events: The CME-course on hypertension, and the scientific winter meeting. They are held every other year. As the secretary I have been holding all sorts of strings: announcements, registration, and such. Then I was supposed to lead a session and hold a presentation, and finally I was going to meet old friends and collaborators and have good time. All in all it was supposed to be a brilliant meeting.

Then a snow storm hit the Uppsala-Stockholm region. My taxi was 20 minutes late, but that turned out not to be a problem because boarding was 30 minutes late. After spending almost two hours on the airplane we were told that the flight was cancelled. Re-booking was impossible, there were 300 people before me in line. Just buying a new ticket on line didn't work. I tried probably ten or fifteen times and it always said that the ticket couldn't be booked.

Anyway, I heard that the meeting was a success. We had the honour of the first presentation of the Scandinavian Candesartan Acute Stroke Trial (SCAST) by Else Sandset. They showed no benefit of strict blood pressure control after acute stroke. It was published the same day in Lancet. This was by no means the only exciting new finding presented, but I shan't bore you too much.

After the scientific meeting there followed the annual meeting of the society where I stood for re-election. I got to continue as secretary in spite of not being there and having moved back to Sweden. Then I missed the dinner.

All this followed last year's failure to hold a CME-course in Trondheim because of the eruption of a volcano on Iceland.

How un-lucky can you be, really?

12th Symposium of vascular Neuroeffector Mechanisms

I just got a heads-up on an interesting symposium in connection with WorldPharma 2010. It is the 12th Symposium of vascular Neuroeffector Mechanisms, put together by Pernille Hansen in Odense. You can find the website at www.vnm2010.org, it will give you a perfect reason for staying another day in Denmark at the very best time of year.

Now I just have to scrape together an abstract. I'm sure I saw some data here somewhere.

Yours,

Michael