Clincal Symptoms of Chronic Nephritis

Chronic Nephritis is a group of Primary Glomerular Diseases due to various kinds of causes. Different pathological changes have corresponding clinical symptoms and their development processes also have great difference. In most cases, the patients with Chronic Nephritis do not have Acute Nephritis history. In rare cases, Acute Nephritis will develop into Chronic Nephritis if left untreated or treated ineffectively. According some researches, only 15~20% of the patients with Chronic Nephritis have the history of Acute Nephritis. The common clinical symptoms of Chronic Nephritis are as follows:

1. High blood pressure

In the disease process, most of the patients with Chronic Nephritis will have high blood pressure. Sometimes, it may be the primary symptom of Chronic Nephritis. For high blood pressure, the patients often have headache, insomnia, hypomnesis and so on. Their blood pressure may rise persistently or intermittently.

2. Edema

In most cases of Chronic Nephritis, the patients have edema in varying degrees. In mild cases, the patients just have edema around eyes, face and other loose part. In severe cases, the patients may have systemic edema and hydrothorax. However, some patients may not have edema in their whole disease course.

3. Renal insufficiency

The main manifestation of renal insufficiency in Chronic Nephritis is decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Afterwards, the patients will have renal tubular insufficiency like the urine concentrating ability declines.

4. Anemia

In the early stage of Chronic Nephritis, if the patients have obvious anemia, the anemia may be related to hemodilution. With the disease progression, more nephrons are impaired so less erythropoietin is secreted by kidneys. At that time, the patients will have moderate and even severe anemia.

5. Abnormal urine test

Nearly all patients with Chronic Nephritis have urine test abnormalities. Generally speaking, they may loss 1~3 grams protein in urine in one to three days. However, some patients may have a large amount of proteinuria and the urine protein is above 3.5 grams per day. Meanwhile, they may be accompanied with mild and even moderate microscopic hematuria. Occasionally, they may have gross hematuria. With the concentrating ability of renal tubule declines, the urination at night will increase and the specific gravity is low and usually keeps below 1.020.


If you have one or several symptoms of Chronic Nephritis above, you should go for further check to find if you have kidney damage so as to receive treatment as early as possible and prevent it from developing into renal failure.