An unusually "complex" glomerulonephritis

Gabriela Martinez-Zayas; Daniel Savino; Sumit Kumar; Kathryn H Dao

doi:10.1080/08998280.2022.2073106

An unusually "complex" glomerulonephritis

Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2022 May 13;35(4):531-533. doi: 10.1080/08998280.2022.2073106. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Gabriela Martinez-Zayas¹, Daniel Savino², Sumit Kumar³, Kathryn H Dao⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
² Department of Pathology, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
³ Division of Nephrology, Texas Kidney Institute, Dallas, Texas.
⁴ Division of Rheumatology, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.

Abstract

A 53-year-old man with granulomatosis with polyangiitis presented with fever and acute kidney injury with nephrotic-range proteinuria following the second dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Renal biopsy revealed an unexpected immune complex-glomerulonephritis (IC-GN) without vasculitis. Further workup found the patient to have HIV that was unmasked following the treatment of IC-GN. This case report explores the possible relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and the immune response in the setting of chronic HIV.

Keywords: COVID vaccine; glomerulonephritis; granulomatosis with polyangiitis; human immunodeficiency virus; immune complexes; type III hypersensitivity.

Publication types

Case Reports