Acute renal failure due to uric acid nephropathy in a patient with renal hypouricemia

This report is about a 23-year-old man who required hemodialysis in connection with an acute renal failure resulting from uric acid nephropathy without hyperuricemia. After recovering renal function he showed extreme hypouricemia (0.1-0.3 mg/dl) and elevated uric acid clearance (100-300 ml/min). The fractional excretion of uric acid (Cua/Ccr) could be suppressed by oral pyrazinamide and enhanced by probenecid. As no other renal tubular or metabolic abnormalities were detected, it is suggested that a markedly increased renal tubular urate secretion was responsible for the hypouricemia and also for the rare side-effect of an uric acid nephropathy in this patient.