Analysis of clinical manifestations and pathology of lupus nephritis: a retrospective review of 82 cases

Lupus nephritis (LN) is a common secondary glomerular disease with diverse clinical manifestations and pathology. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical manifestations and pathology of 82 hospitalized LN patients (73 females and nine males) during February 2004 to February 2009. The mean age at disease onset of male patients was much younger than female patients (27.6 ± 6.8 vs. 35.5 ± 13.9). The kidney biopsy showed that more than 50% was IV-type LN. The II- and III-type LN were also common; their clinical manifestations were common in nephritic syndrome and (or) asymptomatic urinary abnormalities, whereas IV- and V-type LN usually presented nephrotic syndrome. Simultaneously, we investigated that the highest incidence rates of anemia and chronic renal failure were observed in IV- and IV + V-type LN. What was more, we found that serum creatinine level was higher; the interstitial involvement was more severe with renal biopsy. The serum creatinine level and renal interstitial lesions were positively correlated. Our study showed that the different pathologic phenotypes of LN were correlated with the specific clinical manifestations. However, the conclusion should be confirmed by large-scale prospective research.