Age- and gender-related long-term renal outcome in patients with lupus nephritis

Objective: To investigate age- and gender-related long-term renal outcome in patients with lupus nephritis (LN).Methods: This is a retrospective, chart review study of patients with LN at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Kaohsiung, between January 1986 and June 2004. All had undergone a renal biopsy that showed LN. The end point of outcome was chronic renal insufficiency (CRI), which was defined as 'doubling of baseline serum creatinine lasting for at least 6 months with a value at least 2 mg/dl.' The patients were categorized by age tertiles and gender. A 5-year survival curve was constructed to study the effect of age and gender on the outcome.Results: In total, 121 sets of patient data were evaluated. The study group included 104 women and 17 men. Of the study patients, 26 (21%) developed CRI after 5 years of follow-up. There was no significant difference among age groups in developing CRI (p = 0.23). In terms of gender, men had worse long-term renal outcome (p = 0.004) than women.Conclusions: The long-term renal outcome of the LN patients did not differ among age groups, but was worse in men.