Published online Mar 25, 2022. doi: 10.5527/wjn.v11.i2.73
Peer-review started: December 7, 2021
First decision: January 25, 2022
Revised: January 31, 2022
Accepted: March 23, 2022
Article in press: March 23, 2022
Published online: March 25, 2022
Processing time: 107 Days and 17.5 Hours
Nephritic syndrome (NiS) is a major indicator of severe kidney disease requiring renal biopsy for histopathological evaluation, but limited understanding of the syndrome and its significance is currently lacking due to the lack of a comprehensive review in the literature.
The current understanding on the epidemiology of renal diseases finally diagnosed in patients representing various clinical syndromes as indications for the renal biopsy is inaccurate and skewed.
This systematic review aims at collecting the available data in the literature to give the most possible comprehensive overview on the epidemiology of diagnoses that we may expect from the evaluations of renal biopsies in patients with nephritic syndrome.
A systematic review of the literature has been conducted, with 47 studies identified for meta-analyses.
A myriad of results have been made through this systematic review, the most important of them is the high prevalence of immunoglobulin A nephropathy (about 38%) as the final diagnosis of nephritic syndrome, and diagnosing minimal change disease in a proportion of pediatric patients representing with NiS.
The diagnostic spectrum of nephritic syndrome is quite wide, and clinicians should have a better overview on all the possibilities.
It has clinical, research and health care perspectives to the society.