Primary aldosteronism (PA) is a highly prevalent but underdiagnosed cause of hypertension, characterised by renin-independent aldosterone production. PA is associated with a higher incidence of cardiovascular and kidney complications, independent of blood pressure. Although mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs) are the standard treatment when surgical adrenalectomy is not clinically indicated or possible, response is typically monitored using indirect clinical markers such as blood pressure and potassium. Emerging evidence suggests that achieving renin unsuppression may result in better outcomes, yet this hypothesis has not been tested in a randomised controlled trial. The objective of this trial is to evaluate whether a renin-guided MRA titration strategy improves biochemical efficacy compared with standard titration in patients with PA.

This is a multicentre, open-label, pragmatic randomised controlled trial in four academic centres in Canada. 58 adults with confirmed PA, suppressed renin at baseline, and an indication for long-term MRA therapy will be enrolled. Key exclusion criteria include prior MRA use, estimated glomerular filtration rate 4.8 mmol/L and pregnancy. The primary endpoint is the proportion of participants with unsuppressed renin at 12 months. Secondary outcomes include blood pressure, left ventricular mass, kidney function, MRA dose, quality of life and various safety outcomes. Participants will be randomised 1:1 to a renin-guided titration strategy or standard care. In the intervention arm, MRAs will be titrated to achieve unsuppressed renin (>10 ng/L, >15 mIU/L or >1.0 ng/mL/hour). The control arm follows usual clinical practice, without serial renin measurements during dose titration. All participants will be followed for 12 months, with visits at 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Analysis will follow the intention-to-treat principle and use Fisher’s exact test for proportions, mixed-effects models for continuous outcomes and Kaplan-Meier estimates for time-to-event data. The trial is powered to detect a 42% absolute difference in the primary outcome (40% in the control groups vs 82% in the experimental group; alpha 0.05, 80% power, 15% loss to follow-up). This trial will be the first to prospectively assess the biochemical efficacy of a renin-guided MRA titration strategy in PA. If successful, the next phase will be to assess the efficacy of this strategy on important surrogate outcomes and patient-reported outcome measures.

This study was approved by the Research and Ethics Board of the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal (project number 2024-2727). All the participating sites have received the ethics approval. The findings will be disseminated through national and international presentations and peer-reviewed publications.

NCT06108427.

Vaccination has been an effective public health intervention for immunising individuals against many common communicable and non-communicable diseases. However, there is limited information on the efficacy of vaccination among patients undergoing dialysis or patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The objective of this review is to assess the effectiveness of vaccination within dialysis and CKD patient populations.

This will be a systematic review of studies assessing the effectiveness of vaccination among CKD and dialysis patients. Relevant studies will be identified using MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus and Cochrane Library. All searches will be conducted from database inception to October 2025. Only observational studies such as cohort, prospective, retrospective and cross-sectional studies will be included. Data pertaining to patient outcomes and study design will be extracted. A narrative synthesis will be conducted as well as a meta-analysis if data permitting this analysis is extracted from included studies.

Since data collection will be conducted by examining existing studies, no ethical approval or consent will be required. The results of this review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal as well as presented at seminars, conferences and symposiums.

This review protocol has been registered in International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO), registration number CRD42025648534.

Predictive scoring systems support clinicians in decision-making by estimating the prognosis of patients in intensive care units (ICUs). However, there is limited evidence on the accuracy of these systems in predicting mortality and organ dysfunction in special populations. The aim of this review is to assess the performance of predictive scoring systems in forecasting mortality in adult ICU patients in relation to baseline kidney function. It is anticipated that the assessment of predictive scoring systems’ performance and patient outcomes in this review may reveal information that will contribute to improve the quality of care and outcomes for special or under-represented ICU patient populations. It might also inform future research and contribute to the development of novel risk prediction models to address identified gaps or unanswered questions.

This review will include only observational studies, as these allow us to assess the real-world performance of predictive scoring systems in ICU settings by examining the original validation studies. By excluding randomised trials, paediatric studies, case reports and machine learning-derived models, this review focuses on the direct practical use of the scoring systems in adult ICU patients. A comprehensive search of MEDLINE, Embase and Scopus was conducted from database inception to 10 October 2024. The data will be extracted on study characteristics, patient outcomes and performance metrics.

This review will analyse data from previously published studies; no ethical approval is required. All data that will be included in the analysis will be publicly available and will be included in the final manuscript. Results will be disseminated through publication in a peer-reviewed journal and will also be presented at seminars and conferences.

CRD42024611547.