Lupus nephritis (LN)
Lupus attacking the kidney is one organ’s disease showing up in another’s numbers. It can be silent until it is advanced. That is exactly why it is screened for, rather than waited for.
See the kidney in 3D, on your phone or tablet
Insight Kidney is a free app. It shows a healthy kidney, and these diseases, in 3D you can walk around. It runs on iPhone, iPad and Android, not on Windows or Mac computers. It is large, about 1 GB, so Wi-Fi helps.
It is made by Anima Res, a German medical animation studio, and it was paid for by Novartis, who sell drugs for some of these conditions. We name who paid so you can weigh that yourself.
Go deeper
2 layers below. Open any one.Protein and blood appear in the urine before there are symptoms. So in anyone with lupus, the urine is checked on a schedule. When it shows up, a kidney biopsy sorts it into classes, I to VI. And the class, not the label, decides how hard to treat.
Treatment is immunosuppression matched to the biopsy class. Activity is tracked partly by complement. Low C3 and C4, and rising anti-dsDNA antibodies, signal a flare. Good evidence Anti-dsDNA antibodies are aimed at double-stranded DNA. That is why this sits next to the complement system. See CKD, chronic kidney disease, for reading the trend.
Questions to bring
Copy these, or read them out. They fit in a short visit.
- Is my urine checked regularly for protein and blood?
- What class is it on biopsy, and does that set the treatment?
- Are my complement and anti-dsDNA tracked for flares?
The short version
- Getting ahead of it
- If you have lupus, insist on scheduled urine checks — catching it early is what protects the kidney.
- Your testing regime
- Urine protein and blood on a schedule, a biopsy to class it, and complement + anti-dsDNA to track activity.
- What they don’t tell you
- It is often silent until advanced, and the biopsy class — not the label — sets the treatment.
- What it can spawn
- Chronic kidney disease and failure, and flares.
- What it’s confused with
- Other kidney diseases, and a flare mistaken for something else without the complement and dsDNA clues.
General clinical literature; not a diagnosis; nothing here comes from any individual’s medical record.