Urinary excretion of terminal complement complexes in glomerular disease.

To evaluate renal terminal complement activation in patients with glomerular diseases, we measured terminal complement complexes (TCCs) in plasma and urine with sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a monoclonal antibody against a C9 neoepitope expressed on TCC and a polyclonal antihuman C7 antibody. TCCs were detectable in plasma but not in urine in most of normal controls. In plasma, TCC levels were elevated in 4 of 22 patients with lupus nephritis and in 6 of 12 with membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis. However all patients with IgA nephritis, focal glomerulosclerosis, idiopathic membranous nephritis and idiopathic minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MC) showed normal values. In urine, TCCs were detectable in almost all patients with heavy proteinuria (greater than or equal to 100 mg/ml) except MC. The TCCs present in urine were partially purified by gel filtration using Sepharose 6B and were found to contain C5, C6, C7, C8, C9 and S protein by ELISA. Although the molecular weight of TCC is similar to that of IgM, the fractional excretion rate of TCC was about 100 times higher than that of IgM. These results suggest that TCCs detectable in urine contain SC5b-9 complexes and are mostly of renal origin.