Zhao Lingfei, Cheng Jun, Zhou Jingyi, Wu Congcong, Chen Jianghua
Kidney Disease Center, the First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, China.
Intern Med. 2015;54(17):2101-8. doi: 10.2169/internalmedicine.54.3927. Epub 2015 Sep 1.
The best regimen for adult minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MCNS) is still unknown. Due to an excessive number of adverse events caused by oral steroid monotherapy, enhanced steroid therapy (low dose of prednisolone with a short course of methylprednisolone or with another immunosuppressant) has been studied extensively for years. In this study, the PubMed, Embase, EBSCO and Cochrane Library databases were searched for clinical trials which compared enhanced steroid therapy with oral steroid monotherapy in adult MCNS and a meta-analysis was performed. Seven studies involving 357 patients were included. We found that patients treated with enhanced steroid therapy responded more quickly to complete remission (CR) [mean difference = -9.52, 95% confidence interval (CI): -12.66--6.39, p<0.00001] and showed fewer adverse events [risk radio (RR) = 0.72, 95% CI: 0.54-0.97, p=0.03] than patients receiving oral steroid monotherapy. The CR rate (RR= 0.96, 95% CI: 0.83-1.10, p=0.53) and relapse rate (RR=0.87, 95% CI: 0.57-1.34, p=0.53) were similar in both groups.
