Why Can Patients with Chronic Nephritis Develop Anemia

Common symptoms of Chronic Nephritis are edema, Hypertension, abnormal urine, renal insufficiency, abnormal blood test and anemia, etc. Some patients develop the disease with anemia first, which is discovered from Chronic Nephritis and Renal Insufficiency by test.

Patients with Renal Insufficiency , which is caused by Chronic Nephritis or other kidney disease such as chronic pyelonephritis, PKD and Kidney Neoplasms, can have a high level of BUN in serum, which is azotemia. The degree of anemia has a certain relationship with the serious degree of BUN and it is a renal anemia.
Symptoms of renal anemia can be only anemia. But to a few patients, the symptoms can include the decreased quantity of white blood cell, platelet or complete blood cell.

Why can patients with chronic nephritis develop anemia? There may be several mechanisms as follows:

One, hemolysis. Red blood cell of patients with chronic renal insufficiency has a shorter life time. There is a kind of hot variable factor in plasma of patients, which is not dialyzed and makes red blood cell indentation and defection. Thus red blood can fall apart because of mechanical injury.

Second, low utilization of iron leads to obstacles in synthesizing hemoglobin of primary erythrocyte, making invalid generation of marrow red blood cell.

Three, kidney is an important organ secreting erythrogenin. For patients with chronic renal insufficiency, the secreting of erythrogenin will be obviously reduced ,especially when the BUN is more than 1g/L its secretion will sharply reduce or stop, which influences the marrow red blood cell's growth, mature and release.

Four, patients with chronic nephritis can have different part of haemorrhage, which will aggravate anemia.


All the above mechanisms are comprehensive which interact with each other and aggravate the development of anemia. The essential treatment with chronic anemia is to treat protopathy such as hemodialysis, relieving azotemia, which can ameliorate azotemia. Pharmacotherapy such as stanozolol a kind of androgen can also be used as a treatment with azotemia. Blood transfusion is another measure rectifying azotemia.