[Immunologic aspects of the pathogenesis of chronic glomerulonephritis]

In untreated patients suffering from membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, membranous glomerulonephritis and focal glomerulosclerosis with and without the nephrotic syndrome, no convincing evidence in favour of the autoimmune nature of chronic glomerulonephritis could be obtained, since the patients showed the low frequency of the demonstration of antibodies to tissue antigens and the lack of lymphocytes sensitization to the patient's autoantigen. Moreover, there were no convincing data on the impairment of the subpopulation composition of mature T lymphocytes. The patients with chronic glomerulonephritis manifested the deficiency of the production of the early post-thymic immunoregulatory cells. This may confirm a previous assumption advanced by the authors as to the deficiency of the production of the early lymphoid precursors with the marker (end deoxynucleotidyltransferase). The development of chronic glomerulonephritis is likely to be provoked by the impairment of immune homeostasis at the early stages of the differentiation of the lymphoid growing fiber, bringing about the distress of the physiological proliferation and regeneration of the renal tissue.