A Study of Clinicopathological Correlation in Patients with Lupus Nephritis in a Tertiary Centre in South India

BACKGROUND Lupus nephritis (LN) is very common and significantly affects the prognosis of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Although the diagnosis of LN is obvious sometimes from the simple lab tests, it is important to perform a renal biopsy. We wanted to study the correlation between the clinical, lab parameters and the histopathological grade of LN in a tertiary care centre in South India. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted among all patients with biopsy proven LN who underwent a renal biopsy from 19 / 09 / 2017 to 30 / 06 / 2019. Data of 51 patients were obtained. For all the study subjects, a history was obtained, clinical examination was done, and their lab parameters and the renal biopsy report were noted in the proforma. The histology was correlated with the laboratory and clinical data. RESULTS The majority of the patients were females. Maximum patients had class IV LN and class III had more males than any other class of LN. When clinical and laboratory parameters were correlated with histopathological findings, pedal oedema and facial puffiness were found to be correlated with the classes of lupus nephritis with statistical significance. Among investigations, haemoglobin, C3, activity score and 24 -hour urine protein had a statistically significant correlation with the various classes of lupus nephritis. CONCLUSIONS This study suggests some meaningful correlation between pedal oedema, facial puffiness, 24 hours urine protein, haemoglobin levels, C3 levels and activity score with lupus nephritis classes of ISN / RPS 2003 classification. KEY WORDS Lupus, Clinicopathological Correlation