Researchers for the first time have estimated of the prevalence and incidence of glomerulonephritis (GN), according to a poster presented at the National Kidney Foundation’s 2014 Spring Clinical Meetings in Las Vegas.
Using a large employer group health plan database, James B. Wetmore, MD, and colleagues at the Chronic Disease Research Group in Minneapolis, Minn., identified 9,575 cases of primary GN and 7,176 cases of GN resulting from systemic immunologic disease among 13,712,946 enrollees from 2007-2011, which translated into a prevalence of 69.8 cases and 52.3 cases, respectively, per 100,000 persons.
From 2007-2011, 3,553 cases of primary GN were diagnosed during 17,848,285 patient-years, for an incidence of 19.9 cases per 100,000 patient-years. A total of 1,693 cases of GN resulting from systemic immunologic disease were diagnosed during 17,850,897 patient-years, for an incidence of 9.5 cases per 100,000 patient-years.
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The mean age of enrollees was 41 years. The mean age of prevalent and incident patients with primary GN was 51.3 and 53.0 years, respectively. The mean age of prevalent and incident patients with GN from a systemic immunologic disease was 55.2 and 58.0 years, respectively.
For primary GN, 41.7% of prevalent and 40.4% of incident patients were female; for GN from a systemic immunologic disease, 69.0% of prevalent and 58.0% of incident patients were female.
The study also found that patients with primary GN were more likely to progress to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) than patients with GN due to systemic immunologic disease. The ESRD rates, per 1,000 patient-years, were 36.2 and 15.9, respectively.
Patients with GN due to systemic immunologic disease had a higher total hospitalization rate than those with primary GN (968.8 vs. 570.3 per 1,000 patient-years).
