APOL1 and chronic kidney disease: Recently, Lipkowitz et al. (2013) (Parsa et al., 2013) examined effects of variants in gene encoding apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1) on the disease progression and observed that renal risk variants in APOL1 were associated with the higher rates of ESRD and progression of chronic kidney disease in African-American patients as compared to white patients.