(pathology)

Degenerative or retrogressive renal lesions, distinct from inflammation (nephritis) or vascular involvement (nephrosclerosis), especially as applied to tubular lesions (tubular nephritis). Also known as nephrodystrophy; nephropathy.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

an obsolete term for the nephrotic syndrome. The term was used to designate degenerative changes in the renal tubules accompanied by a massive excretion of protein in the urine, by a decrease in the protein content and an increase in the fat content of the blood, by edema, and by other symptoms.

Lipoid and amyloid nephroses were once classified as distinct diseases. Detailed histological studies of the kidneys, especially those studies that used the electron microscope and other research methods, have established that the glomeruli are affected in nephrosis as well as the tubules. Thus, there is no strict morphological difference between nephritis and nephrosis. Furthermore, clinical observations show that a disease that begins as lipoid nephrosis often acquires features of nephritis and, conversely, that glomerulonephritis develops into lipoid nephrosis.