Author/Authors :
Mubarak, Muhammed Histopathology Department - Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation - Karachi, Pakistan , Kazi, Javed I Histopathology Department - Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation - Karachi, Pakistan
Abstract :
IgM nephropathy (IgMN) is an idiopathic immune complex-mediated glomerulopathy
that was first described as a distinct disease in a nephropathology literature in 1978. Here,
a historical review and the current status of IgMN in the light of world literature and the
current experience will be presented. The Pubmed (www.pubmed.gov) search was made
for articles on IgMN as the sole subject of the study or where it constituted a significant
number of cases in a biopsy series in the world literature written in English. A total of 41
articles were found. A critical review of the literature was made. Soon after 1978, a series
of reports were published mostly from the western world, but the interest in the entity
did not withstand the test of time. No substantial basic medical research was carried out
and the disease was largely ignored by the western researchers. More recently, a flurry
of articles have appeared in the literature on the topic, mostly from tropical countries,
and have renewed the interest in the entity. However, most of the current literature on
IgMN is based on clinical observations, and experimental models and mechanistic studies
of IgMN are lacking. There is an urgent need to develop consensus based criteria for
the diagnosis of the condition, as well as, to focus the research on mechanistic studies to
understand the pathogenesis of the disease better.