A Study of Frequency of Glomerular Diseases (Biopsy Proven) from a Tertiary Care Center of North West Rajasthan

Aims and Objective: Glomerular disease (GD) is one of the most common forms of renal diseases and can have many different clinical presentations and there is a variation in the prevalence of the type of GD according to geographical location and race of the study population, so our aim is to report the frequency of biopsy-proven glomerular disease (GD) in a single center in North-west Rajasthan.

Materials and Methods: Medical records of 48 patients with biopsy-proven GD over a period of 1 year from October 2013 to October 2014 were prospectively analyzed. The clinical, laboratory, and histological data were recorded. All biopsy specimens were examined by the same pathologist with light and immunofluorescence microscopy. Electron microscopic analysis was performed only in selected cases.

Results: According to renal biopsies, chronic thrombotic microangiopathy was present in 1 patient and it belonged to secondary glomerular disease, 2 patients had diffuse lupus nephritis class IV and they also had secondary glomerular disease, 17 patients had FSGS and out of them 16 belonged to primary glomerular disease, 9 patients had IgA Nephropathy. We identified 5 patients each had MPGN and MGN and they all belonged to primary glomerular disease. Three patients had mesangioproliferative glomerulonephritis. Minimal change disease was present in 3 patients while 1 patient had renal amyloidosis. Out of total 48 patients, 31 had nephrotic syndrome while 17 patients had nephritic syndrome out of them 28 and 15 patients had primary glomerular disease respectively.

Conclusion: Our study showed that FSGS as most common cause of primary glomerular disease {the most common variant is not otherwise specified (NOS)}, followed by IgA nephropathy in North West Rajasthan. Lupus nephritis was more common in patients who had secondary glomerular disease in our study. The spectrum of GD varies according to the area of study and changes over time.