Is there a role for immunosuppression in immunoglobulin A nephropathy?

The most common primary glomerular disease globally is IgA nephropathy (IgAN). It is often a slowly progressive disease, and similar to 40% of patients will progress to kidney failure. Due to a lack of large clinical trial networks and a lack of surrogate markers of treatment efficacy, there are relatively few large multicenter clinical trials in IgAN. Given that both the pathogenesis and progression of IgAN are linked to defects in mucosal immune regulation and inflammation, use of immunosuppression to prevent kidney failure is well founded. However, recent clinical trials have supported improvement in disease parameters, but this has not always translated to parallel amelioration in longer-term outcome. In this review we summarize the most current clinical research examining the efficacy of immunosuppression in IgAN.