Cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular mortality in dialysis patients: where is the link?

Over the past decade, the research agenda in dialysis has been dominated by studies on risk factors associated with cardiovascular mortality. It has now become increasingly clear that in dialysis patients, non-cardiovascular causes of death are increased to the same extent as cardiovascular mortality, and therefore research efforts in this area deserve an equally prominent place on the nephrology research agenda. As previous research has suggested an association between cardiovascular disease and infections, more research on potential links between the causal pathways of cardiovascular events and infections is also warranted.