Nephrotic syndrome can occur with many diseases, including the kidney diseases caused by diabetes mellitus, but some causes are unknown. Prevention of nephrotic syndrome relies on controlling these diseases.

Treatment of nephrotic syndrome focuses on identifying the underlying cause if possible and reducing high cholesterol, blood pressure, and protein in urine through diet, medications, or both. One group of blood pressure medications called ACE inhibitors also protects the kidneys by reducing proteinuria.

Nephrotic syndrome may go away once the underlying cause, if known, has been treated. In children, 80 percent of cases of nephrotic syndrome are caused by minimal change disease, which can be successfully treated with prednisone. However, in adults, most of the time the underlying cause is a kidney disease such as membranous nephropathy or focal segmental glomerulonephritis, and these diseases often persist even with treatment. In these cases, the kidneys may gradually lose their ability to filter wastes and excess water from the blood. If kidney failure occurs, the patient will need dialysis or a kidney transplant.

More Information

American Kidney Fund
6110 Executive Boulevard
Suite 1010
Rockville, MD 20852
Phone: 1-800-638-8299 or (301) 881-3052
Email: helpline@akfinc.org
Internet: www.kidneyfund.org

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Health Information Center
P.O. Box 30105
Bethesda, MD 20824-0105
Phone: (301) 592-8573
Email: nhlbiinfo@rover.nhlbi.nih.gov
Internet: www.nhlbi.nih.gov

National Kidney Foundation
30 East 33rd Street
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 1-800-622-9010 or (212) 889-2210
Email: info@kidney.org
Internet: www.kidney.org

Additional Information on Nephrotic Syndrome

The National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse collects resource information on kidney and urologic diseases for the Combined Health Information Database (CHID). CHID is a database produced by health-related agencies of the Federal Government. This database provides titles, abstracts, and availability information for health information and health education resources.

To provide you with the most up-to-date resources, information specialists at the clearinghouse created an automatic search of CHID. To obtain this information, you may view the results of the automatic on search Nephrotic Syndrome.

If you wish to perform your own search of the database, you may access the CHID Online website and search CHID yourself.