IgA Development and Prognosis

IgA nephropathy is a kidney disease that causes the kidneys to become inflamed and it is the third leading cause of chronic kidney disease in the United States.
Immunoglobulin A is an antibody. Antibodies will be produced when there is a virus, bacterium or toxin, in normal cases, these antibodies help fight the thing that is invading your body. IgA can get into kidney with reasons that are unknown, which causes inflammation and finally leads to blood and protein in urine, high blood pressure, swelling and other signs of chronic kidney disease.
At the beginning, there are no symptoms for IgA nephropathy which is a progressive condition, and it can take decades before you experience any symptoms. However, blood in the urine is not always a sign of severe illness. Sometimes it can be caused by a variety of things, such as intense exercise, kidney stones or bladder infections. But if blood in urine continues, you should be careful, because this could be a symptom for IgA nephropathy.
If IgA nephropathy can not be treated well, condition may develop into Renal Failure eventually within one or two or more years, which depends on different people’ specific condition. It has a relationship with many factors, such as infections, eating habits and so on. When ESRF appears, dialysis or a kidney transplant may be needed. So for patients with IgA nephropathy, they should take the proper and efficient treatment at the early stage of disease, in order to improve the quality of their life, avoid dialysis or a kidney transplant.
In our Hospital, we have immunotherapy on the basis of its pathological mechanism for IgA nephropathy, which is a combination therapy of Chinese medicine and western medicine and can be divided into 6 steps: immune diagnosis, immune clearance, immune blocking, immune tolerance, immune adjustment and immune protection.