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Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on February 21, 2008
Rheumatology 2008 47(4):432-436; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kem377
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Evaluation of renal vascular lesions using circulating endothelial cells in patients with lupus nephritis

G. Yao, Z.-H. Liu, C. Zheng, X. Zhang, H. Chen, C. Zeng and L.-S. Li

Research Institute of Nephrology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University Clinical School of Medicine, Nanjing, China.

Correspondence to: Z.-H. Liu, Research Institute of Nephrology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing 210002, PR China. E-mail: zhihong{at}21cn.net


  Abstract

Objective. Currently the detection of renal vascular lesions (VLS) mainly depends on biopsy examination, and lacks surrogate biomarkers for clinical dynamic evaluation. The aim of this study is to find the correlation between numbers of circulating endothelial cells (CECs) and renal VLS in lupus nephritis (LN).

Methods. Thirty LN patients with VLS and 30 LN patients without VLS were recruited. Thirty age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers served as controls. CECs were isolated from peripheral blood with anti-CD-146-coated immunomagnetic Dynabeads and were counted under microscopy. Parameters of renal involvement, including blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine, 24 h urine protein excretion and quantitative urine sedimentation were also measured.

Results. The number of CECs showed no difference between LN patients without VLS and controls. In patients with VLS, the number of CECs was significantly higher than those without VLS (P < 0.01). A strong positive correlation was found between CECs and serum creatinine (r = 0.503, P < 0.01) and mean blood pressure (r = 0.423, P < 0.05). In all LN patients with VLS, CEC number of the patients with thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) significantly increased compared with those without TMA (P < 0.01).

Conclusion. Numeration of CECs may serve as a potential and useful marker for vasculopathy in LN. Dynamic observations of CEC number can be used not only to provide evidence for monitoring disease severity and disease activity, but also to determine therapy efficacy in LN patients.

KEY WORDS: Lupus nephritis, Renal vascular lesion, Circulating endothelial cells

Submitted 17 July 2007; revised version accepted 18 December 2007.
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