[Circulating immune complexes in kidney diseases: pathogenic significance, methods of proof, problems, tendencies]

The tendency to recognize immune complexes already before their deposition in the tissue led in the seventies to the development of numerous methods of estimation for immune complexes in the serum and to the proof of these complexes in many diseases. The author enters these methods and their problems, the results got up to now for renal diseases, i. e. above all for glomerulonephritides, are cited in form of theses. Among others belong to this the establishments that the proof of circulating immune complexes cannot contribute to the diagnosis, but to the control of the activity of the diseases and of the therapeutic effect. Recently, research concerning immune complexes yielded remarkable results as to their role as regulating factors of the unspecific as well as of the specific defense mechanisms of the organism. This promises that further clarifications on etiology and genesis particularly of diseases of the immune complex type are to be expected, among them also for glomerulonephritides.