Minimal change disease and COVID-19 vaccination: Four cases and review of literature

There have been multiple reports of the development of de novo or relapse of glomerular diseases after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. While most of them have occurred with the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/NIAID), there also have been reports associated with the vector vaccines (AstraZeneca/ChAdOx1-S) vaccine and the inactivated vaccines. Minimal change disease (MCD) is one of the more common glomerular diseases noted to have been associated with the COVID-19 vaccination. We report here 4 more cases of MCD occurring in association with the COVID-19 vaccine, 3 were de novo cases, and 1 case had a relapse of MCD. We also review all the 41 cases described thus far in the literature and review potential common pathways activated by the vaccination that play a role in the pathogenesis of MCD.