Membranous Nephropathy: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Membranous Nephropathy is a common cause of Nephrotic Syndrome that leads to changes and inflammation of kidney filters, glomeruli. Because it affects many people’s health both adults and children, knowing its causes, symptoms and treatment is very necessary.

Causes

In membranous nephropathy, patient’s glomerular basement membrane is thickened. Even though the exact cause of this thickening is still unknown, the following indeed increases the risks for this medical disease:

● Infections such as hepatitis B virus infection

● Autoimmune disorders including SLE, Grave’s disease and others

● Medications

● Cancers, especially lung and colon cancer

Symptoms

It is reported that Membranous Nephropathy occurs in about 2 out of every 10,000 people and it can occur at any age. Once you or your loved ones suffer from this disease, your kidneys can’t do their job normally with damaged kidney filters and then you may have one or more symptoms.

Swelling, proteinuria, fatigue, poor appetite, frequent urination at night, weight gain, etc, all can contribute to the symptoms of this disorder. Once you find out your symptoms, you had better to make a diagnosis to make sure you can take correct treatment.

Treatment options

At present, there are mainly three treatment options for Membranous Nephropathy: corticosteroid, immunosuppressive agents and Micro-Chinese Medicine Osmotherapy

Corticosteroid has an effect of easing patients’ symptoms especially there is a heavy loss of protein in the urine. This type of medicines such as prednisone can help remit patients’ proteinuria and swelling.

When it can’t work very well, the doctor may prescribe some immunosuppressive agents like cellcept to strengthen the effect of corticosteroid. However, both of these medicines will lower patient’s immunity and cause some other side effects.

Micro-Chinese Medicine Osmotherapy aims to change the kidney filter cells’ poor blood and oxygen supply. Once these damaged kidney cells can get enough nutrition, most of them can recover to work and the thickened glomerular basement membrane will also be solved. As a result, patients’ condition can be improved largely.