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Puffy eyelids and swelling in other parts of the body is a common symptom of IgA Nephropathy. Some patients may think swelling isn’t severe, but in fact it can affect their normal life largely. Therefore, getting an overall understanding of puffy eyelids in IgA Nephropathy is quite necessary.
Puffy eyelids in IgA Nephropathy causes
IgA Nephropathy is one of most common glomerular diseases in which a lot of protein-IgA deposits in the kidney filters, glomeruli. Over time, the IgA deposits may cause kidney damage and the kidneys to leak blood and sometimes protein in the urine. When a large part of kidney filters can’t do their job normally, swelling like puffy eyelids occurs easily as a consequence of the following causes:
The one cause is that in IgA Nephropathy, glomeruli are damaged but the kidney tubules can still work very well that leads to water retention and sodium retention. When excess water and sodium deposits in the eyelids, puffy eyelids will appear. The other cause is the heavy loss of protein in the urine. When the glomerular filtration function is damaged, more and more protein will leak from the body. If left uncontrolled, this can cause low plasma protein level and swelling.
Puffy eyelids in IgA Nephropathy treatment
Different causes need different managements. To make sure the patients take correct treatment, the cause of their swelling should be found out. If patient’s puffy eyelids are due to the first cause, the patient may need to develop a low-sodium diet, drink correct amount of water and take some diuretics to increase their urine volume. If protein leakage is the direct cause, steroids may be needed to ease patients’ proteinuria and swelling. Taking right type and dose of medicines, puffy eyelids are not difficult to treat.
However, even though the above methods are able to help treat puffy eyelids in IgA Nephropathy, they can do nothing to the damaged glomeruli. Therefore, the effective treatment that can help repair the damaged kidney filters should also be sought.
