Arteriolar hyalinosis and renal outcomes in patients with immunoglobulin A nephropathy

BACKGROUND: The relationship between arteriolar hyalinosis and renal progression in immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN) is not fully understood. We aimed to investigate the clinicopathological features and outcomes of IgAN with or without arteriolar hyalinosis. METHODS: A total of 762 diagnosed with IgAN patients were retrospectively analyzed. We classified IgAN patients into two groups with or without arteriolar hyalinosis. Then, the clinicopathological characteristics of the two groups were compared. We used Kaplan–Meier survival analysis to compare the composite kidney outcome of the two groups and applied multivariate Cox regression analyses to test the association between arteriolar hyalinosis and composite kidney outcome. RESULTS: Overall, 412 (54.1%) patients had arteriolar hyalinosis, including 173 patients diagnosed with hypertension. IgAN patients with arteriolar hyalinosis were older and had higher proteinuria, urea, uric acid, and blood pressure, while lower eGFR than those without arteriolar hyalinosis. Subgroup analysis showed similar results in IgAN patients with hypertension. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that IgAN patients with arteriolar hyalinosis had worse composite kidney outcome than those without arteriolar hyalinosis. In addition, subgroup analysis revealed that patients with hypertension have worse composite kidney outcome than those without hypertension. Multivariate Cox regression analyses confirm that arteriolar hyalinosis (HR 2.57; 95% CI 1.41–4.69; p = 0.002) is an independent risk factor for renal prognosis in IgAN patients. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that arteriolar hyalinosis is a common vascular lesion in IgAN patients. Arteriolar hyalinosis connects closely with hypertension, and arteriolar hyalinosis is an independent risk factor for renal prognosis in patients with IgAN.