From the Selzman Institute of Kidney Health, Section of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
Exp Clin Transplant. 2023 Jun;21(Suppl 2):42-45. doi: 10.6002/ect.IAHNCongress.10.
Abnormalities of the renal interstitium were noted early while identifying chronic kidney disease in 1827; however, interest in glomerular and vascular lesions was then distracted from their further study. As a complication of scarlet fever, interstitial lesions attracted attention in 1859 and came to be defined as acute interstitial nephritis in 1898. The chronic form of interstitial nephritis was traditionally attributed to pyelonephritis until the advent of kidney biopsy in the 1950s, when interstitial lesions were recognized as an independent primary cause of chronic kidney disease from studies of analgesic nephropathy and vesico-ureteral reflux. The term tubulointerstitial nephritis was introduced in 1963 and promoted to denote the role of the tubules in the pathogenesis and the clinical presentation of interstitial nephritis as tubular dysfunction. Studies since then have established that fibrotic tubulointerstitial nephritis lesions correlate best with the severity and progression of kidney diseases independent of their etiology.
早在 1827 年诊断慢性肾脏病时就已经注意到肾间质的异常；然而，对肾小球和血管病变的研究兴趣随后被分散，不再继续深入。作为猩红热的并发症，间质病变于 1859 年引起关注，并于 1898 年被定义为急性间质性肾炎。在 20 世纪 50 年代肾脏活检出现之前，间质肾炎的慢性形式传统上归因于肾盂肾炎，直到那时间质病变才被认识到是慢性肾脏病的一个独立的原发性病因，这一认识来自对镇痛药肾病和膀胱输尿管反流的研究。1963 年引入了“肾小管间质性肾炎”一词，并推广用于表示肾小管在间质性肾炎发病机制和临床表现中的作用，即肾小管功能障碍。此后的研究已经证实，纤维化的肾小管间质性肾炎病变与肾脏疾病的严重程度和进展相关性最好，而与病因无关。
