[Clare.T]

Does anybody know what relationship could be expected between signs of kidney disease in urine and signs in blood work ? Can there be excessive protein spillage, above 3g /24 hours without an abnormal BUN, blood creatinine, high cholesterol and so on, or come to that without any physical symptoms such as swelling ?

Thanks for any comments

Clare

 

[cath]

HI Clare,

This site has a lot of very good information.

http://renux.dmed.ed.ac.uk/EdREN/EdRenHDBKhome.html

I think that once the GFR drops under 30% there will certainly be symptoms, proteinuria and abnormal bloods, with this being more marked once the renal function drops below 15%.

For the milder stages the first sign will be proteinuria, followed by increasing creatinine and hypertension. How fast these progress of course varies enormously. High potassium and urea are usually only associated with end stage renal failure, as are symptoms like fluid retention oedema and itching skin.

My understanding is that it is possible to have nephrotic syndrome levels of proteinuria (ie 3g or ore in 24hours) without abnormal bloods or other symptoms, but that many or most patients will have a reduces GFR or raised creatinine at this level and probably hypertension, but probably not uraemic syndrome (itchy skin, odema, nausea foul breath...).


X C X

 

[Lupusdude]

Hi Clare,

I've had high protein in my 24 hr. urine before with completely normal blood work(including bun and creatinine). I've never had hypertension or high cholesterol. However, with a biopsy, the doctors did find membranous glomerulonephritis. So yes it is possible. I was treated with Cellcept and that cleared the proteinurea right up.

If it's you in this situation, I hope it gets treated right away and they can stop any progression. Hugs and good wishes always,

Lupusdude

 

[Clare.T]

Thank you both very much. Very interesting ! Luckily it isn't for myself, just something that crops up on the forum quite often.

There's a page on that Edinburgh site which deals with the exact issue
" Management of non symptomatic proteinurea " protein levels of 1000 and lists possible causes. I get the impression that they would usually keep a close eye on and only go to biopsy if levels were considerably higher and prolonged and there were stong grounds for thinking it was nephritis.
Yet another aspect of lupus that isn't written in stone and can be highly variable in presentation

Cheers

Clare