Prognosis of acute poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis in childhood: prospective study and review of the literature.

Serial, clinical, clinicopathologic and histologic studies performed simultaneously following onset of PS-AGN in children for a period of up to 144 months revealed no evidence of progression to chronic glomerulonephritis. Although acute morphologic changes were more severe in renal tissue obtained from patients with AGN following streptococcal upper respiratory infection than following pyoderma, the acute manifestations in both groups subsided 6 to 12 weeks after onset. Cumulative morphologic healing occurred in 20% of patients at 24 months, in 43% at 48 months after onset of PS-AGN; 1 patient who was unhealed at 49 months was lost to follow-up. In 2 patients (6%), acute histologic exacerbations without clinical signs occurred within 24 months after onset. Subsequent healing was documented histologically. Addis counts remained abnormal in a high percentage of patients throughout the 12 years of observation and did not correlate with the histologic findings of renal biopsy tissue. The occasional demonstration of renal vascular disease and/or hypertension may merely reflect the early development of spontaneous essential hypertension although the possibility of a relationship to the previous attack of PS-AGN is intriguing. This question cannot be answered at this time. Renal biopsy studies are more dependable than Addis counts in assessing the course of PS-AGN. The significance of persistence of immunofluorescent and/or electron microscopic changes (subepithelial dense deposits) many years after onset in 58% of 12 patients studied, at a time when a majority of patients (84%) revealed healing by light microscopy, remains to be assessed.