Serial complement studies in a patient with Goodpasture's syndrome treated with bilateral nephrectomy and renal transplantation.

A young male patient with Goodpasture's syndrome was treated with bilateral nephrectomy and when antiglomerular basement membrane antibodies could no longer be detected he received a cadaveric renal homograft. Fifteen months later he is in good health and without signs of pulmonary disease. Renal function is satisfactory, and there are no findings indicating recurrence of the nephritis. Serial complement studies during the entire course revealed varying degrees of activity in the sequence in the different phases: a high degree of in vivo activation of complement was found in the period before the nephrectomy, there was a moderate degree of activation in the period between the nephrectomy and transplantation and, finally, there were no signs of activity in the system after transplantation. This investigation strongly suggests that the complement system is of definite pathogenetic significance in this human equivalent to experimental nephrotoxic nephritis.