Discriminant analysis in renal histological diagnosis of primary glomerular diseases

Differences in clinical and laboratory findings between different renal histological lesions were examined in 138 patients with primary glomerular diseases, and discriminant analysis was carried out in 72 patients to determine whether each histological type could be distinguished by the linear combination of these findings. The histological types were classified into 7 groups: minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MCNS); focal glomerular sclerosis (FGS); membranous nephropathy (MN); membranoproliferative GN (MPGN); proliferative GN (PGN); PGN with focal crescents (P X fc); and minor glomerular lesions (MGL). Ten variantes were selected from the clinical and laboratory findings in the early stage of the disease: sex, age of onset, acute onset, oliguria, urine protein, RBC in urinary sediment, serum albumin, serum total cholesterol, serum creatinine, and systolic blood pressure. In the discriminant analysis made regarding all these items collectively as continuous variantes, there was a significant difference (p less than 0.001) in the combination patterns of the variantes among histological types. Therefore, further analysis was performed using canonical axes and a multi-stage discriminant method. The canonical score and data obtained by a multi-stage discriminant method demonstrated that MCNS, MN, MPGN, and the group of PGN, P X fc and MGL could be distinguished from each other well, but that the degree of proliferation or the presence of focal lesions could not be predicted. As a result of these studies, we obtained a discriminant formula with which we could predict, with fairly high accuracy, some histological types on the basis of data on the 10 items mentioned.