Renal Side Effects of COVID-19 Vaccination

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a challenge on global healthcare and has tremendously impacted everyone’s lives. Vaccination is one of the most effective and vital strategies to halt the pandemic. However, new-onset and relapsed kidney diseases have been reported after COVID-19 vaccination. This narrative review was conducted to collect published data and generalize some hypotheses for the pathogenesis of renal side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: A systematic literature search of articles reporting renal adverse reactions, including in adults and children, in the PubMed and Web of Science databases until August 2022 was performed. Results: A total of 130 cases reporting a renal adverse reaction following COVID-19 vaccination from 90 articles were included in this review, of which 90 (69%) were new-onset kidney diseases, while 40 (31%) were relapsed kidney diseases. The most frequent renal side effects of COVID-19 vaccination were minimal change disease (52 cases), IgA nephropathy (48 cases), antineutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody vasculitis (16 cases), and acute interstitial nephritis (12 cases). Other renal side effects occurred at a much lower frequency. Follow-up data were available for 105 patients, and 100 patients (95%) responded to the treatments. Conclusions: The number of reported cases is far less than the hundreds of millions of vaccinations, and the benefit of COVID-19 vaccination far outweighs its risks. This review will assist healthcare professionals, particularly nephrologists, who should be aware of these side effects and recognize them early and treat them efficiently.