A move from Alliance Medicorp, a joint venture between Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL) and medical technology firm Trivitron Healthcare, to tie up with US-based dialysis services major DaVita Inc for its future expansion has failed, according to Pratap C Reddy, executive chairman, AHEL.

With plans for the tie-up with DaVita falling through, Alliance Medicorp would proceed with the expansion projects on its own, he said. Around 70 per cent of the stake in the joint venture is with Apollo Hospitals while 30 per cent is with Trivitron Healthcare, promoted by entrepreneur G S K Velu.

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Till January-end, 2012, the joint venture had five dialysis centres and plans were afoot to expand this to 20 clinics in future, according to earlier reports.

The JV has rebranded its dental clinics chain business under the brand Apollo Dental Centers, into White Dental Care by restructuring it into various formats to cater to the needs of different patient segments.

The JV firm had plans to dilute stake to raise funds for its future expansion. According to earlier reports, both the JV partners were planning to dilute stake to pave way for the new partner.

Davita Inc provides kidney care services in the United States, delivering dialysis services to patients with chronic kidney failure and end-stage renal disease.

Responding to a query on reports that Sutherland Global Services and Genpact are in talks with AHEL’s healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) arm, Apollo Health Street, he said the company is interested in diluting stakes to companies which are into the same line of business. It was approached by a few private investors, but the decision is not to dilute stakes to private investors, he said.

AHEL, which is conducting robotic surgeries from four centres including Chennai and Kolkata, is planning to install the robotic surgery equipments in two more centres in the present fiscal, said Reddy. It would require around Rs 10-15 crore for a single robot, a minimally-invasive technology which is claimed to be effective for surgery in obese and diabetic patients.

The robots are patented by California-based Intuitive Surgicals Inc for which the patent is expected to expire by the end of this year. The price of the product may come down post expiry of the patent, which could then be manufactured by other manufacturers too, said experts in robotic surgery.

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Hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure, affects one-third of adults, significantly increasing cardiovascular risk and mortality. Approximately 50 percent of hypertensive patients are salt-sensitive and exhibit an increase in blood pressure following salt-intake.

According to the researchers, little is known about the mechanisms acting in the brain to control the removal of dietary salt from the body through the kidneys. "Our data shows that changes in dietary sodium intake evoked natural site-specific changes in brain hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) G?i2 protein levels," said Senior Author Richard Wainford, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics.

Wainford and his team explored the role of G?i2 signal transduction proteins in the brain pathways activated to regulate salt and water excretion and subsequently blood pressure. They identified a previously unknown role of PVN G?i2-subunit proteins as a central mechanism mediating the suppression of renal sympathetic nerve traffic to the kidneys and the renal excretion of sodium.

These data provide a target for new therapies that may improve cardiovascular and renal excretory function. This may help treat multiple disease states, such as salt-sensitive hypertension and congestive heart failure caused by elevated sodium intake.

Journal reference: FASEB Journal

Provided by Boston University Medical Center

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A leading provider of kidney care has acquired a dialysis practice owned by affiliates of St. Francis Health Center and Stormont-Vail HealthCare.

St. Francis and Stormont-Vail announced the move in a joint news release Monday morning.

Colleen Kasson, divisional vice president at DaVita, said the company is excited to welcome patients of Kansas Dialysis Services. KDS provides outpatient, inpatient and home dialysis care to 350 patients in Topeka, Lawrence, Ottawa and Sabetha, the release said.

“We look forward to continuing to provide the highest quality care to KDS patients,” Kasson said in the release.

Scott Solcher, medical director for KDS, said DaVita “is the world leader in providing superior dialysis services.” The release said DaVita will continue to have a working relationship with both St. Francis and Stormont-Vail.

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