Primary glomerular disease associated with high cardiovascular disease risk

It is a known fact that patients with chronic kidney disease are known to be at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular risk in patients with primary glomerular diseases is poorly understood because these conditions are rare and require a kidney biopsy for diagnosis.

Very little is known about the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in such patients. Hence, in a population-based study on adults with primary glomerular disease, researchers described the risk of cardiovascular disease compared to the general population and also studied the impact of traditional and kidney-related risk factors on cardiovascular disease risk.

Study is published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD). Here the rate of cardiovascular events in 1,912 Canadian patients with biopsy-proven IgA nephropathy, minimal change disease, and membranous nephropathy was 2.5 times as high as the general population and was high for each disease type.

Consideration of disease type, kidney function, and proteinuria improved the prediction of cardiovascular events. Therefore, to summarise, this population-level study showed that patients with primary glomerular diseases have a high cardiovascular risk, and that inclusion of kidney-specific risk factors may improve risk stratification.