Renal diseases in HIV-infected patients: pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment

There are several HIV-associated renal disease, the pathogenesis of which is intimately related to the viral infection. Patients' demographic characteristics and clinical syndrome analysis may provide clinical clues to the individual renal disease, but in cases where a precise diagnosis is necessary, a renal biopsy is the only definitive way to establish the diagnosis. The explosion of knowledge regarding the molecular biology of the HIV life cycle and its mechanisms of infection has provided us not only with insights into the causes of the renal diseases, but has allowed nephrologists to advance, in the course of a decade, from therapeutic nihilism to the ability to provide treatment for the early and later stages of several of these diseases. It is hoped that with better understanding of the pathogenesis of the spectrum of kidney diseases encountered in HIV-infected patients, and the initiation and completion of properly designed and controlled therapeutic trials, patients quality and length of life will be enhanced.