Common Symptoms of Lupus Nephritis

Lupus Nephritis refers to the kidney damage caused by systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). About 35~90% of the people with SLE have kidney injury and mainly have the following symptoms.

1. Systemic symptoms of Lupus Nephritis

Lupus Nephritis can start acutely or chronically. In the early period, it has some nonspecific symptoms like fever, especially low fever, fatigue, body weight loss and so on. Infection, sunshine, medicines, spirit trauma, operation and so on can induce or aggravate the disease.

2. Skin and mucosa injuries

Skin and mucosa injuries are also common symptoms of Lupus Nephritis. Erythema is very common and about 40% of the patients with Lupus Nephritis have typical butterfly-shaped erythema. In the acute period, the patients usually have light red edema and mild expanding of capillaries and scaly furfuration. In serious case, they even have blister, ulcer, skin atrophy and chromatosis. The exposed part of skin usually has maculopapule, suggillation and so on. In all the patients with Lupus Nephritis, about 80% of them have skin injuries and nearly 15~20% of them have Raynaud's phenomenon. Moreover, their mouth mucosa has blebs, ulcer, which covers 12% of the total population. A minority of the patients have zonal herpes.

3. Joints and muscle

In the symptoms of Lupus Nephritis, joint and muscle swelling and pain are very commonly found and usually they the primary symptom for their treatment. Hand joints are most likely to be involved and also the joints of knees, foot, ankle and wrist also have injuries. Their joints pain usually spreads symmetrically. In some cases, the patients have joint deformity, muscle pain and fatigue.

4. Kidney damage

About 50% of the patients with Lupus Nephritis have the clinical symptoms of kidney disease like proteinuria, hematuria, cast urine, decreased specific gravity, high blood pressure, increased creatinine level and so on. Under electron microscope and immunofluorescence, nearly 100% of the patients with Lupus Nephritis have pathological abnormalities.

5. Gastrointestinal tract

Gastrointestinal tract diseases can be found in a part of patients with Lupus Nephritis like upper gastrointestinal bleeding, hematochezia, ascitic fluid and so on. Those gastrointestinal tract symptoms of Lupus Nephritis are caused by the vasculitis in the gastrointestinal tract.

Besides the above common symptoms of Lupus Nephritis, the patients also have liver, heart, blood system injuries and so on.


Many patients with lupus just think they do not have kidney damage at all when their test results are negative. In fact, that is an incorrect opinion because the disease usually develops latently. Therefore, they patients with lupus should keep follow-ups in the following months and even the recent years. Any help, you can email to kidney-treatment@hotmail.com. We will respond your questions in the first time.