Immunopathology of the Renal Glomerulus: Immune Complex Deposit and Antibasement Membrane Disease

This monograph recounts the senior author's earlier and more recent experimental studies on serum sickness glomerulonephritis and its relationship to immune complexes. It also deals with his study of 213 human renal biopsies by light and electron microscopy and by immunofluorescence. According to the authors there are two main forms of experimental immune complex glomerulonephritis. One involves the peripheral capillary loops of the glomerulus, and is due to small soluble antigen-antibody complexes that form aggregates in the subepithelial portions of the basement membrane. The second form involves the mesangium and the subendothelial areas of the glomerulus, and is due to the lodgment in these areas of large, poorly soluble complexes. With respect to the human material, a new classification of the socalled immune complex diseases of the glomerulus is proposed, based in the main on the two patterns of glomerular involvement observed experimentally. The authors attempt to relate the pathogenesis