Clinicopathological Pattern of Non-lupus Full House Nephropathy

Full-house immunofluorescence in a kidney biopsy is a common observation in lupus nephritis (LN) and was previously used synonymously with the diagnosis of LN. Though a minority of the patients will develop features suggestive of SLE during follow-up, a majority of the patients will continue without any clinical or serological evidence of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) over time. Our aim to conduct this study was to work up the clinicopathological spectrum of these "full-house" nephropathies (FHN) which were not due to lupus nephritis.

A total of 6244 renal biopsies were evaluated at SGPGIMS Lucknow from January 2007 to December 2017 for full-house immunofluorescence. All those patients who had no clinical or serological evidence of SLE at the time of renal biopsy or at any time during follow up were included.

Among 498 patients with full house immunofluorescence, 81 patients had no clinical or serological evidence of SLE at the time of renal biopsy or at any time during follow up. The prevalence of non-lupus FHN in this study was 19.4%, and the major diagnoses were membranous nephropathy (25.9%), IgAN (22.2%), MPGN (14.8%), DPGN (12.3%), Crescentic GN (12.3%), Amyloidosis (8.6%), C1q nephropathy (3.7%).

Full-house nephropathy (FHN), not otherwise suggestive of lupus nephritis, can also be found in a number of other conditions. Non-lupus full house nephropathy is an umbrella term for such cases which do not satisfy the standard criteria of SLE. This will prevent misclassifying these patients into SLE and further prevent them from unnecessary immunosuppression protocols.