Acute glomerulonephritis in infancy.

Karsner (1908) described 'congenital nephritis' in an infant who died 45 minutes after a normal birth, and Lapage (1932) discussed acute haemorrhagic nephritis in an 11-day-old boy who died in a few days. Conrad (1938) gave a resume of three infants with neonatal nephritis for which no cause was found. One infant died on the seventh day of life, but the others recovered. Generalized oedema, haematuria and albuminuria were common to all. The Kahn test was negative in one infant. Their births were normal and the ante-partum history of the mothers was uneventful. Acute glomerulonephritis in babies under 2 years old has been described. Smith (1946) reported acute glomerulonephritis, Wilms tumour and a horseshoe kidney in a 10-month-old boy and Blechmann (1950) described acute glomerulonephriti4s with uraemia in a 21-month-old baby, who made a complete recovery. Various attempts have been made to analyse and classify nephritis in children. Wyllie and Moncrieff (1926) analysed 87 cases of juvenile nephritis in children between the ages of 2 and 10 years and divided them broadly into three groups: (1) acute haemorrhagic nephritis (22 cases with no deaths); (2) acute exudative nephritis (23 cases with six deaths); (3) chronic nephritis (42 cases with 12 deaths). Aldrich (1930, 1931) examined 186 consecutive children with nephritis and placed them into three main groups. A subsidiary group included cases of subacute bacterial endocarditis, syphilis, tuberculosis and renal infantilism. Aldrich's groups are: (l) acute post-infective haemorrhagic nephritis (129 cases, 6 2% died); (2) chronic non-specific nephritis (24 cases, 54 2% died); (3) nephrosis (20 cases, 35% died); (4) other cases (13 cases, 4 6% died). The ages of the children were not mentioned. Rennie (1934) reviewed acute nephritis in 10 infants under 18 months old; five of them were below 1 year old, the youngest 4 months old. There were