Glomerulonephritis

What is Glomerulonephritis?

Glomerulonephritis is a group of kidney diseases which injure those areas of the kidneys required to filter the waste from the fluids and blood in the body. Those areas are known as glomeruli.

The kidney is extremely important in your body because it is responsible for filtering the blood and removing waste products from it. However, when the kidneys are injured or diseased, they are not able to get rid of the wastes that accumulate in the fluid. If the condition is not treated immediately, it may eventually cause the kidneys to fail permanently. As the kidneys stop working, the waste in your body remains unfiltered.

The typical stages of glomerulonephritis are as follows:

Asymptomatic haematuria or proteinuria wherein the proteins are not filtered by the kidneys. The urine may contain increasing amounts of proteins.
Nephrotic syndrome wherein there is heavy amount of proteins and albumin in the urine. At this stage of the condition, the patient also experiences severe fluid retention.
Nephritic syndrome in which there is a fall in glomerular filtration rate. The patient also experiences intense water and salt retention along with hypertension and high blood pressure.
Rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis is one of the latter stages where there is an increasing and rapid loss of renal function. The patient also experiences end-stage renal failure which occurs over a matter of the coming few weeks.

Alternative Names: Glomerulonephritis is known by many other names such as Nephrotic syndrome, Glomerular disease, nephritis and necrotizing glomerulonephritis.

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