(Cologne, 29 November 2021) The Association of German Kidney Centres has awarded the Bernd Tersteegen Prize 2021 to Katharina Dörr, an internist at the Division of Nephrology and Dialysis of the Department of Medicine IIII at MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna, for her study titled "Randomized Trial of Etelcalcetide for Cardiac Hypertrophy in Hemodialysis".
The annual Bernd Tersteegen Prize aims to promote theoretical and especially application-oriented research on topical aspects of chronic renal failure and, in particular, in the area of outpatient renal replacement therapy. The prize was presented during the Annual Nephrology Meeting of the Association of German Kidney Centres in Cologne.
Progression of cardiac hypertrophy in dialysis patients can be retarded by drugs
Patients with chronic renal impairment often develop a thickening of the heart muscle known as left ventricular hypertrophy. This is particularly pronounced in late-stage renal failure patients, i.e. those who require renal replacement therapy such as haemodialysis. The danger of this thickening of the heart muscle lies in a significantly increased risk of acute cardiovascular diseases such as sudden cardiac death. Patients on haemodialysis have several risk factors for the development of such myocardial thickening. One of these is an increase in so-called fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), a protein that increases as kidney function deteriorates. However, FGF23 levels can be increased or decreased through the use of drugs.
The study was conducted between 2017 and 2019 by Katharina Dörr from Rainer Oberbauer's research group at the Division of Nephrology and Dialysis of the Department of Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna and was published in the prestigious journal "Circulation Research" (impact factor 17.4), where it won the Best Manuscript Award 2021.
About Katharina Dörr
Katharina Dörr was born in Krakow, Poland in 1990. She studied human medicine at MedUni Vienna between 2008 and 2014. Since 2015, she has been working at the Division of Nephrology and Dialysis at MedUni Vienna's Department of Medicine III. In 2020, she completed her PhD on the Doctoral Programme of Applied Medical Science - Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Disease and her master’s degree in Health Care Management. She completed her specialist training in the summer of 2021 and has subsequently worked as a consultant nephrologist. As a research associate in Rainer Oberbauer's working group, she is involved in clinical research into cardiovascular pathologies in patients with terminal kidney disease. In addition to her research activities, she teaches on the human medicine course.