Analyze the Causes of Kidney Diseases from Immunology

The human body has a powerful immune system stopping the foreign pathological substances from invading into body. Moreover, when the innate immune system is impaired, the back-up immune system will be activated to work together with the innate immune system. According to that, our human will not get disease. However, why does Kidney Disease occur?

Kidney Disease refers to a series of kidney pathological changes due to renal intrinsic tissues and cells. More than 95% of Kidney Disease is caused by immune function abnormality. Therefore, the causes of Kidney Disease are immune function disorder or abnormality.

No matter the innate immune system or back-up system can not function well, they all can cause abnormal immune response in body thus leading to Kidney Disease. If the innate immune system disorders, it releases messages to activate the adaptive immune system continuously, which can make the adaptive immune system work endlessly thus leading to excess immune response. If the back-up immune system disorders, it loses self-restriction ability, which also can cause the adaptive immune system to work endlessly.

The endless immune inflammatory response not only can not clear up the pathological foreign substance out of body, but also damage the normal cells and tissues in body. The excess immune inflammatory response is termed as hypertensive reaction.

If the hypersensitive reaction occurs in other organs and tissues, it will cause immune diseases in the organs and tissues. When the hypersensitive reaction occurs in kidneys, it will lead to Kidney Disease.

The reason why hypersensitivity occurs in the kidneys is that large amounts of immune complexes and other pathological substances are accumulated in the kidneys. Then why do the immune complexes and pathological substances deposit in kidneys?

That is because there are specific binding sites (also known as epitopes) on renal intrinsic cells and excellular matrixes (kidney tissues) for them to combine onto. The human body will mount an immune response to remove them from body. Hypersensitivity response will present if the immune response becomes allergic.


Renal intrinsic cells and kidney tissues will be damaged if hypersensitivity is out of control. In clinic, all kinds of kidney diseases are just clinical manifestations of kidney injury. As can be seen, the key to treating Kidney Disease is to eliminate deposited immune complexes and other pathological substances that can result in hypersensitivity in the kidneys.