April 30, 2025
6 min learn
With greater than 15,000 followers and 18,000 posts on X and a podcast known as “Channel Your Enthusiasm” reviewing a basic textual content about acid-base and electrolyte issues, Roger Rodby, MD, has embraced web schooling.
Rodby serves as a group chief for the American Society of Nephrology on-line open group and is a member of the social media advisory group for the American Journal of Kidney Illnesses. In his biography on X, he describes himself as “at all times studying.”
“Twitter, or X, is nice for instructing,” Rodby informed Healio. “We share instances, we share opinions, we share articles, and it suits me effectively.”
The Nationwide Kidney Basis not too long ago honored Rodby, a professor of medication within the nephrology division at Rush College Medical Middle, with the 2025 Donald W. Seldin Award, “established to acknowledge excellence in scientific nephrology within the custom of one of many foremost lecturers and researchers within the area,” based on a corporation press launch.
“I’ve spent my skilled life attempting to enhance my instructing abilities, affect others to be inquisitive, suppose exterior the field and to by no means be intellectually complacent. The latter a part of my profession has coated so many new venues that has allowed me to succeed in extra individuals,” Rodby stated within the launch.
Rodby talked with Healio about what led him to nephrology, the enduring humor of Seinfeld, and the facility of a social media platform to attach educators throughout generations.
Healio: What was the defining second that led you to your area?
Rodby: I at all times appreciated the analytical a part of drugs. After I was first launched to inner drugs as a medical scholar, I knew precisely which drugs pathway I might enter. Then in my later years in medical faculty, I grew to become excited about endocrinology and nephrology, that are each type of cerebral, analytical-pathway-oriented specialties.
As a resident I matched in New Jersey at Rutgers College. Throughout my first month there, I used to be placed on an elective with nephrology working with Richard A. Sherman, MD. Richard was simply so sensible, and I cherished the best way he checked out issues. I knew then I used to be going to be a nephrologist. Most individuals aren’t fortunate sufficient to seek out one thing that early of their profession. I knew from that time that endocrine was out, and nephrology was in. There was no turning again.
Healio: What space of analysis in nephrology pursuits you most proper now?
Rodby: We do numerous various things in nephrology, from physiology to dialysis and kidney failure, and a few uncommon ailments. What’s been attention-grabbing is the explosion of medicines which have modified the face of and the method to glomerulonephritis.
It began, I suppose, in oncology with all of the biologics and understanding the pathways. That area has utterly erupted — from attempting to kill each cell as a substitute of the particular person, to focusing on particular most cancers cells. The identical factor occurred with rheumatology, the place you’ll destroy the immune system and hopefully the affected person wouldn’t have joint ache anymore.
In nephrology, numerous these medication have the identical type of results. Within the final decade, we have now modified our method to treating these ailments with a lot much less poisonous medication. I’m at Rush College, which has an extended historical past of glomerulonephritis analysis; a few of the earliest renal biopsies have been achieved at Rush.
We have now a biopsy convention that’s Zoomed each couple of weeks and adopted internationally. These conferences are recorded, and we now have over 100 on our YouTube channel. Glomerulonephritis is a giant a part of what we do in educational drugs, and it has been thrilling to see it evolve. Nephrology was stagnant for some time. However within the final decade, illness understandings and therapeutic choices have exploded. It parallels the know-how that modified the fields of oncology and rheumatology and possibly each area, for that matter.
Healio: Following up on that, have you ever ever witnessed historical past within the making?
Rodby: After I first began my coaching in 1985, we have been experiencing a brand new paradigm in treating kidney illness with renin-angiotensin system inhibition. There have been animal fashions that confirmed blocking this pathway can change the end result of kidney failure independently of no matter else was driving that kidney illness’s final result.
I used to be lucky to be at Rush, the place we did one of many first research with one of many first medication in that area — captopril. My boss on the time, Edmund J. Lewis, MD, was the principal investigator of a research that checked out captopril and kind 1 diabetes. The researchers translated the discovering in animal fashions that captopril can markedly sluggish the development of renal illness, after which we went forward and did a research with one other renin-angiotensin system inhibitor, irbesartan for kind 2 diabetes. It was an enormous paradigm shift as a result of we have been not simply sitting by and watching individuals’s kidney failure. We began to play an energetic position in stopping what diabetes (and now a number of different kidney ailments) does to the kidneys. These research outlined renoprotection. I simply occurred to land right here and was fortunate to be a part of that.
Healio: The place do you suppose we’re going within the subsequent 5 to10 years in kidney care?
Rodby: That’s a very good query as a result of dialysis is an unimaginable know-how, but it surely has improved solely slightly bit within the final 20 years. There’s solely a lot you are able to do with a machine. It’s nice we are able to change the kidney with dialysis, however there may be not so much that has modified.
The longer term for individuals with kidney failure is renal transplantation, and it’s laborious to get individuals to donate. There are a lot of extra individuals on the transplant checklist than there are donors. What’s actually thrilling is xenotransplantation. It has an extended approach to go together with the kidney, however that might be a recreation changer — a very large one.
Healio: In endocrinology, we now have a wearable synthetic pancreas. Do you suppose we’ll get there with kidney, one thing small and wearable?
Rodby: That’s a debate we’re having: Is the longer term a small, wearable kidney? Or is the longer term a pig kidney? Yearly, the Nationwide Kidney Basis of Illinois has debates amongst 5 coaching packages in Chicago. Our debate subject this 12 months is synthetic kidney vs. pig kidney. I feel there can be a wearable kidney, but when xenotransplants work, I’m undecided you’ll want it. I wouldn’t guess towards biologic know-how. Will probably be attention-grabbing to see the place that goes.
Healio: If you happen to weren’t a nephrologist, what would you be doing?
Rodby: Very like George Costanza [the Seinfeld character portrayed by Jason Alexander], I might be a marine biologist [Editor’s note: See http://imdb.com/title/tt0697729/]. I cherished biology rising up. I spent my childhood catching butterflies. I used to scuba dive so much. I might have simply cherished to be some type of biologist, and the ocean would have been a fantastic place to do it.
Healio: Would you inform me a bit about your following on X and the way you bought into social media?
Rodby: One in every of my former fellows knew I used to be concerned within the American Society of Nephrology group weblog board and informed me it was time to affix Twitter — it’s now known as X — that there have been individuals there concerned in schooling. I posted snippets of knowledge, and one factor led to a different, and other people simply began following me.
Due to the politics of what’s happening with Elon Musk, lots of people have left the platform. I feel the largest gamers have simply deserted Twitter. I’ve felt that whereas my politics are completely in step with leaving, what I can do on Twitter is generally schooling. Twitter, or X, is nice for instructing. We share instances, we share opinions, we share articles, and it suits me effectively. I nonetheless suppose I’ll attain much more individuals if I keep than if I’m going over to a different platform.
A shaggy dog story: Mr. Benner, my biology trainer, was the one highschool trainer that basically confirmed ardour in his instructing, and that was the rationale I went into science in faculty.
About 20 years in the past, I despatched him a letter: “Hey, I need you to know that you simply have been the rationale I went into science, and I’ve achieved OK.” It’s vital to inform the individuals in your life that they meant one thing to you. I by no means heard from him.
Yesterday, out of the clear blue, he wrote again to a tweet I posted in X. He has in all probability been following me all alongside. He follows 20 individuals and has 4 followers. Now he has 5 as a result of I began following him. However there he was along with his image, my highschool biology trainer as a completely recognizable 90-year-old man, who in his phrases “nonetheless has his kidneys.”
For extra info:
Roger Rodby, MD, may be reached at roger_a_rodby@rush.edu or on X @NephRodby.
