Weekly curated digest
Cystic kidney disease, week by week.
PKD Digest (Digest DRP) is a weekly digest in English and Portuguese on cystic kidney disease, including ADPKD and other forms. Each card has a plain-language summary and a short clinical note.
For patients & families · For clinicians
Latest issue
This week’s issue
Lead story · 1 ·
Hepatic manifestations of ciliopathies: genetic causes and clinical update
Ciliopathies are inherited conditions caused by faults in cilia, tiny antenna-like structures on cells. Many of them, including ARPKD and ADPKD, can affect the liver as well as the kidneys. This review explains how faulty cilia disturb the development of the liver's bile ducts and describes the main liver patterns: scarring of the liver and high pressure in its blood vessels in ARPKD, liver cysts in ADPKD, which usually appear in adulthood, and other patterns in rarer syndromes. Genetic testing with large gene panels or genome sequencing is increasingly used to find the cause. It is a review of existing knowledge, not a new study.
How to read each card
Each card tells the same update twice: once for families, once for clinicians.
- Plain summary: says in one sentence what changed and who it matters for.
- Clinical note: gives the technical context for professionals.
- Question & source: suggests a question for your visit and links the original source with its date.
Cystic kidney disease covers different conditions involving cysts in the kidneys; ADPKD is only one of them. This digest covers the disease in general, so not every card will apply to your diagnosis.
Check each card’s date and original source, and ask your care team what applies to you.
Do not change treatment based on a card. Educational curation only — not medical advice.
How curation works
A script shortlists new PubMed papers each week. The summaries are drafted with AI help, then a person reviews and edits each one and decides what to publish. Educational only — not medical advice.