Nephrotic proteinuria with pre-eclampsia.

During a retrospective study of 100 patients who underwent renal biopsy because of pregnancy complicated by hypertension, we found 19 patients whom proteinuria exceeded 5.0 Gm. per 24 hours and an additional eight patients in whom excretion ranged between 3.5 and 5 Gm. per day. Of these 27 patients, 23 had the kidney lesion of pre-eclampsia, and three of them had superimposed hypertensive changes in the vasculature. The remaining four had other renal diseases. We located and re-examined 10 of the 23 pre-eclamptic women, 12 to 104 (mean, 36) months after delivery. Serum creatinine levels were normal in all but one, who was discovered to have polycystic kidney disease. During the same time period, we located the records of six women who had heavy proteinuria during gestation but were normotensive. Thus, at our institution, pre-eclampsia is the most common cause of the nephrotic syndrome in pregnancy. The frequency of nephrotic proteinuria in pre-eclampsia appears higher than previously suspected, but, despite this fact, recovery was complete in most instances.