Meijiao (Mei) Zhou

Epidemiology Lead

Meijiao (Mei) Zhou

Mei has been conducting epidemiological research since 2012, starting during her master’s and doctoral studies in Epidemiology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) in New Orleans. Prior to joining Fresenius Medical Care (FME), her research primarily focused on cancer patients, examining how various treatments impact patients’ survival and health-related quality of life. Her contributions were recognized with induction into the Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society upon her graduation from LSUHSC. Since joining FME in 2019, Mei’s research and publications have spanned a variety of areas, including renal pharmaceuticals, dialyzers, dialysate, fluid management, water systems, and home dialysis. She finds it deeply fulfilling to see how her work contributes to improving care and outcomes for dialysis patients.

Recent Articles by Meijiao (Mei) Zhou

  • Renal failure
    July 19, 2026
    Predictive modeling of fluid status in hemodialysis: model development and internal validation using the MONitoring dialysis outcomes (MONDO) global database
    Sheng-Han Yueh, Jochen Raimann, Bernard Canaud, Meijiao Zhou, Xiaoling Ye, Ariella Mermelstein, Jeroen Kooman, Frank van der Sande, Len Usvyat, Peter Kotanko, Hanjie Zhang
    RESULTSModels including BIS data showed excellent accuracy (R2 > 0.85), models excluding BIS features achieved inferior performance (R2 = 0.73-0.81). In models using BIS inputs, recent bioimpedance changes dominated feature importance. Models without BIS data relied primarily on urea distribution volume, age, and height.CONCLUSIONThese findings indicate that fluid volume compartments can be reliably estimated from routinely collected clinical data and history BIS measurements, offering valuable support for interim assessment of fluid status between scheduled BIS measurements.METHODUsing adult patients from the MONitoring Dialysis Outcomes (MONDO) 2012 cohort, we developed predictive models to estimate fluid volume compartments based on demographic data, laboratory values, treatment parameters, and multi-frequency whole-body bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) measurements. Clinical features were aggregated over an up-to-90-day look-back window, yielding 18,600 patients and 162,479 dialysis treatments. eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) models were trained and tested using patient-level splits, with parallel models built either incorporating or excluding prior BIS measurements.BACKGROUNDOptimized fluid management is crucial in dialysis care because extracellular volume overload drives adverse cardiovascular outcomes. At the same time, comorbidities such as inflammation and protein energy wasting lead to decreased muscle mass and intracellular water. Accurate assessment of total body water (TBW) and its extracellular water (ECW) and intracellular water (ICW) compartments is therefore essential to guide ultrafiltration, evaluate dialysis adequacy, and monitor patient risk.

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Meijiao (Mei) Zhou
Senior Epidemiologist