IgA Nephropathy Symptoms and Diagnosis

IgA nephropathy is also called Berger’s Disease and it is a common kidney disorder caused by immune disorders and deposition of abnormal immune complexes in the glomerular mesangial areas.

IgA nephropathy belongs to chronic kidney disease and it usually develops and progresses over many years and the prognosis has great individual differences. Some patients can achieve complete clinical remission with timely and proper treatment or even without no treatment at all. While there are about 20% IgA nephropathy patients will in the end develop into end stage renal failure after many years.

If IgA nephropathy can be detected and diagnosed in the early stage, the illness progression can be much slowed and more renal damages can be prevented. The most common symptoms and signs of IgA kidney disease are roughly the same as other chronic kidney diseases including dark colored urine, bubbles in urine, high blood pressure, swellings in the hands and feet, flank pains and low-grade fever, etc. With the continuous deterioration of illness conditions, more symptoms and complications will occur such as anemia, bone problems, nausea, vomiting, etc.

But often IgA nephropathy causes no obvious symptoms or discomforts in the early stages. The disease can go unnoticed for many years and often it is detected in the routine urine test when abnormal proteins and red blood cells are found in the urine.

Therefore the routine physical examination is very necessary and patients should attach more importance to it.

The following are some diagnosis methods for IgA nephropathy and they might be helpful if you are not sure whether you have IgA kidney disease or not.

Immunofluorescence. About 50% IgA nephropathy patients have elevated IgA in their blood and about 37-75% patients have circulating IgA immune complexes in their body.

Urine protein. The quantitative and type of proteinuria is very important for measuring the current illness conditions and for the prognosis of the disease.

Kidney function test. Illness conditions can experience rapid progression when creatinine is higher than 1.5.

Blood in urine. Usually the red blood cells in urine are not uniform in shape and this indicates that it is glomerular hematuria.