Nephrotic syndrome in Hodgkin's disease. Evidence for pathogenesis alternative to immune complex deposition

The nephrotic syndrome has been reported to occur in patients with Hodgkin's disease even in the absence of amyloidosis, tumor infiltration of renal vein thrombosis. Three patients are presented with Hodgkin's disease and the nephrotic syndrome whose renal biopsy specimens studied with light, immunofluorescence and electron microscopy were compatible with "lipoid nephrosis" (minimal change disease). A review of the literature reveals 35 patients with Hodgkin's disease and the nephrotic syndrome. Renal tissue was available for examination in only 27 patients. The majority of patients apparently had glomerular alterations consistent with lipoid nephrosis. The nephrotic syndrome in most of these patients remitted with a variety of methods of therapy (including excision, irradiation, prednisone and cyclophosphamide) and tended to relapse with a recurrence of Hodgkin's disease. In three-fourths of the patients with Hodgkin's disease and the nephrotic syndrome, the Hodgkin's disease was of a mixed cellularity type. The etiology of lipoid nephrosis, although unclear, may be a consequence of altered lymphocyte function. Hodgkin's disease is a malignancy involving T lymphocytes, and the nephrotic syndrome occurring in the course of Hodgkin's disease may be a result of an adverse effect of glomeruli by products of tumor lymphocytes rather than of glomerular deposition of immune complexes.