INFECTION AND HEMORRHAGIC NEPHRITIS

Abstract

Infection as a cause of diffuse hemorrhagic or glomerular nephritis is well known. Since Loehlein's1(1907) and Fahr's2(1912) fundamental observations emphasizing the frequency with which glomerular nephritis is associated with streptococcic infections, usually of the upper respiratory tract, subsequent extensive studies,3both clinical and experimental, have tended to confirm these observations. Longcope and his associates4(1927) published the results of detailed clinical and bacteriologic studies of forty cases of acute and subacute glomerular nephritis. The onset of an overwhelming majority of the cases in their series (85 per cent) was accompanied or preceded by acute infections of the upper respiratory tract, of which 68.7 per cent showed the beta type, and 12.2 per cent the alpha type, of the hemolytic streptococcus. After years of observation they concluded that disappearance of infection and of the hemolytic streptococcus was related to recovery in nephritis and, contrariwise, that