Kidney Disease Most Common In Asian Populations

Researchers have identified five genomic regions that increase susceptibility to IgA nephropathy, a major cause of kidney failure worldwide.

AsianScientist (Apr. 4, 2011) – Researchers have identified five regions in the human genome that increase susceptibility to immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy, a major cause of kidney failure worldwide.

The findings, a result of long-term collaborations among investigators in the United States, Italy, and China, was published in the April issue of Nature Genetics.

The researchers looked at the genes of 3,144 people of Chinese and European ancestry, all of whom have IgA nephropathy. The disease occurs when abnormal IgA antibodies deposit on the delicate filtering portion of the kidney and form tangles. The immune system tries to get rid of the tangles, but the kidneys are caught in the crossfire, further destroying the delicate filters.

Worldwide prevalence of IgA nephropathy appears highest in Asia and southern Europe, and rare in Africans. The frequency of genetic risk variants was similarly highest in Chinese people, intermediate in Europeans and lowest in Africans.

The “beauty” of this study, according to Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, was that nobody had suspected the association of the immune basis of IgA nephropathy with kidney diseases.

Some of the genes implicated in the study were also highly interesting because they play a role in other unrelated immune disorders. For example, the complement factor H region, called a locus, has been associated with macular degeneration, a progressive eye disease that can result in blindness; and susceptibility to meningococcal infection, the bacteria that causes meningitis.

IgA nephropathy appears to cause different clinical outcomes in people. In some, it appears to be a benign disease, causing only occasional blood in the urine, while others need a kidney transplant.

Principal investigator Dr. Ali Gharavi of Columbia University’s Division of Nephrology hopes that further study may result in a more accurate, less invasive way of diagnosing IgA nephropathy. Current diagnostic methods require a kidney biopsy, an invasive procedure that must be performed in a hospital.

The article can be found at: Gharavi AG et al. (2011) Genome-wide association study identifies susceptibility loci for IgA nephropathy.

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Source: NIH/NIDDK.
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