Prevalence of Renal Disease in HIV-1 Infected Children at KNH, Nairobi

Sixty percent of patient with HIV/AIDs develop some form of renal pathology. Proteinuria may be the earliest clinical manifestation of HIV nephropathy. We carried out a cross-sectional survey among HIV infected children to determine the prevalence of renal disease. A total of 87 subjects were recruited. Forty six (52.8%) were females and 41 (47.1%) males. Their age ranged from 18 months to 13 years with a median age of 60 months. Overall, 35.6% of the patients had evidence of nephropathy based on presence of persistent proteinuria and/or abnormal glomerular filtration rate. Proteinuria was found in 28(32.2%) of the subjects and persistent proteinuria in 14 (16.1%) subjects. Forty four (50.6%) of the subjects were in WHO clinical stage 3 of the disease, 17(19.5%) in stage 2, 14 (16.1%) in stage 4 and 12 (13.8%) were in stage 1. Sixteen (18.4%) of the study subjects were not immunosuppressed as defined by CD4 >25%, 19(21.8%) were moderately immunosuppressed and 52(59.8%) were severely immunosuppressed. A third of HIV infected children had some form of renal disease.Persistent proteinuria was more frequent among children with early clinical stage of HIV/AIDS disease in this study