Glomerular diseases have become recognized increasingly as a major cause of acute and chronic kidney injury in dogs.1'2'3 There are numerous causes and pathogenic mechanisms for glomerular diseases whose etiopathogenesis may be linked to genetic mutations, infectious agents, inflammatory diseases, neoplastic diseases, autoimmune diseases, and other causes. In many instances the underlying cause remains unknown, and the disease is classified as idiopathic. Glomerular diseases are detected easily on the basis of routine laboratory parameters and screening, as well as quantitative, urine tests.4 The clinical consequences of glomerular diseases also are readily recognizable admixtures of weight loss, hypoalbuminemia, hyperlipidemia, progressive renal dysfunction, hypertension, and fluid disorders. What has remained poorly characterized is the spectrum and correlation of these laboratory and clinical features to the distinctive pathologic subclassifications of glomerular injury that have become recognized recently when glomerular pathology is evaluated by more comprehensive diagnostic imaging.3 In human beings, specific glomerular diseases, identified by their light microscopic, immunopathologic, and electron microscopic features, often are correlatedwith clinical and clinicopathologic findings that further characterize the disease entity. In veterinary medicine, the clinical features of glomerular diseases are brushed broadly with general descriptors that preclude or prevent their potential for more specific classification and prognostic and therapeutic characterization.
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