Report of six kidney disease-associated Castleman's disease cases

Castleman's disease (CD) is an uncommon, benign, non-neoplastic, lymphoproliferative disease of uncertain etiology. Here, we report 6 cases of kidney disease-associated CD in China. All patients exhibited multicentric CD (MCD) with involvement of the mediastinum, neck, bilateral axillary, and bilateral inguinal regions. Clinical manifestations included fever, fatigue, edema, and swollen lymph nodes. Laboratory examinations of all 6 patients found proteinuria or renal insufficiency. Two of the patients were diagnosed with hyaline vascular type MCD, and 4 patients were diagnosed with plasma cell type CD. The case 1 and case 4 patients had mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis, case 3 had type I membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, case 2 and case 5 had interstitial nephritis, and case 6 had AA type amyloidosis nephropathy. Three patients were treated with prednisone plus cyclophosphamide, 1 patient received COP therapy (cyclophosphamide, vincristine and prednisone), and 2 patients received COP therapy supplemented by small doses of radiation therapy delivered to local lymph nodes. In all cases, the clinical manifestations of MCD, including fever, fatigue, edema, swollen lymph nodes, and proteinuria, were alleviated or abolished by treatment. One patient responded to treatment with complete MCD remission, and another 4 patients survived. However, 1 patient died due to renal failure. In conclusion, common diagnosis and treatment techniques are suitable for kidney disease-associated CD. However, treatment efficacy might be difficult to predict, and some cases may have poor prognosis with this treatment strategy. Therefore, additional studies investigating kidney disease-associated CD and treatment outcomes in larger patient populations are needed.