1/ The classic presentation at morning report for hypercalcemia starts with polyuria, constipation and confusion. #UncleBob wanted to understand why - stimulated by @CuriousClinPod ? @HannahRAbrams @tony_breu @AvrahamCooperMD

2/ Let's start with confusion. Finding information on this is very non-specific but I think this quote helps: High calcium levels can be a catalyst for neuronal demise, possibly due to glutaminergic excitotoxicity and dopaminergic and serotonergic dysfunction.
3/ But colleagues and learners know that I am most interested in the polyuria. I have taught that hypercalcemia can cause nephrogenic diabetes insipidus, but the mechanism was unclear. Let's review how ADH works and then look at an interesting study that suggests an answer.
4/ Antidiuretic hormone stimulates water reabsorption: stimulating insertion of "water channels" or aquaporins into kidney tubule membranes which transport solute-free H20 through tubular cells & back into blood, -> decrease in plasma osms and an increase urine osms.
5/ Thus we need to stimulate ADH production and have aquaporins (specifically aquaporin-2) available for transport. In general nephrogenic DI occurs because of the lack of aquaporin-2(AQP2).
6/ How does this happen with hypercalcemia? I found this article: Hypercalcemia induces targeted autophagic degradation of aquaporin-2 at the onset of nephrogenic diabetes insipidus - Kidney International https://t.co/0l87zvTnZj
7/ So now we have to understand autophagy! From the article: Autophagy is a highly conserved biological process that involves removal of protein aggregates and damaged organelles and the subsequent transport of these components to the lysosome for degradation
8/ Hypercalcemia causes protein degradation. This occurs for many proteins, and specifically AQP2. Degradation occurs very rapidly in animal models. Thus, patients will have dilute urine because ADH cannot interact with the missing AQP2.
9/ As an aside, this likely also occurs with hypokalemia (but not as dramatically). The animal studies also show that once the hypercalcemia resolves, AQP2 quickly returns to normal levels.
10/ The constipation likely occurs secondary to the volume contraction from the polyuria. This can be severe enough to elevate to obstipation.
11/ Lowering the calcium level to normal resolves these symptoms. I hope this discussion of mechanisms makes sense.

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You gotta think about this one carefully!

Imagine you go to the doctor and get tested for a rare disease (only 1 in 10,000 people get it.)

The test is 99% effective in detecting both sick and healthy people.

Your test comes back positive.

Are you really sick? Explain below 👇

The most complete answer from every reply so far is from Dr. Lena. Thanks for taking the time and going through


You can get the answer using Bayes' theorem, but let's try to come up with it in a different —maybe more intuitive— way.

👇


Here is what we know:

- Out of 10,000 people, 1 is sick
- Out of 100 sick people, 99 test positive
- Out of 100 healthy people, 99 test negative

Assuming 1 million people take the test (including you):

- 100 of them are sick
- 999,900 of them are healthy

👇

Let's now test both groups, starting with the 100 people sick:

▫️ 99 of them will be diagnosed (correctly) as sick (99%)

▫️ 1 of them is going to be diagnosed (incorrectly) as healthy (1%)

👇
I think @SamAdlerBell in his quest to be the contrarian on Fauci gets several things wrong here. 1/


First, the failure last year actually was driven by the White House, the #Trump inner circle. Watch what's happening now, the US' scientific and public health infrastructure is creaking back to life. 2/

I think Sam underestimates the decimation of many of our health agencies over the past four years and the establishment of ideological control over them during the pandemic. 3/

I also am puzzled why Tony gets the blame for not speaking up, etc. Robert Redfield, Brett Giroir, Deb Birx, Jerome Adams, Alex Azar all could have done the same. 4/

Several of these people Bob Redfield, Brett Giroir, Alex Azar were led by craven ambition, Jerome Adams by cowardice, but I do think Deb Birx and Tony tried as institutionalists, insiders to make a difference. 5/

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