Proteinuric renal disease in children in South-Western Uganda

Abstract

Proteinuric renal disease is common in Africa in both children and adults: in the 1960s it accounted for 2–3% of medical admissions.1 The condition is more severe than nephrotic syndrome in developed countries, incurring high mortality and typically being resistant to corticosteroids or antimitotic agents. Admission rates with nephrotic syndrome are higher during periods of intense malaria transmission, and an association has been reported with Plasmodium malariae infection.2,3 Most literature on this subject pre-dates the epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV nephropathy is increasingly recognized in the developed world,4 but renal manifestations of HIV have not been studied in Africa