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Background. Kidney involvement related to infective endocarditis (IE) may present with different clinical findings. The most common histopathological finding of renal involvement is a combination of proliferative and exudative glomerulonephritis. However, severe acute kidney injury (AKI) induced by crescentic glomerulonephritis (CGN) is extremely rare in children with IE. To date, only 4 pediatric cases with IE-induced CGN had been reported. We present a 14-year old girl with IE-induced CGN. Case. A 14-year old girl with fever, macroscopic hematuria, oliguria, and acute kidney injury (AKI) was admitted to our clinic. The medical history revealed that the patient had undergone several cardiac interventions due to truncus arteriosus type 1, and she recovered from IE-induced glomerulonephritis following antibiotherapy six months ago. During admission, the patient was diagnosed with IE according to one major (positive imaging finding) and three minor (fever, predisposing cardiac disease, and immunological criterion) criteria. Immediate antibiotic treatment was initiated. A kidney biopsy was performed, which showed crescentic glomerulonephritis (CGN with crescents, >50%). Daily pulse steroid (3 days), monthly pulse cyclophosphamide (6 doses), and oral steroid (2 mg/kg/day) therapy were initiated with gradual dose tapering. The patient underwent 12 hemodialysis sessions until the 38th day of the treatment. She was discharged on the 45th day of treatment with normal kidney function tests and negative acute phase reactants. Treatment was maintained with mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) after a 6-month course of cyclophosphamide. MMF was discontinued in the 12th month. At the 18th -month follow-up visit the patient had mild proteinuria, and was on ramipril therapy. Conclusions. The occurrence of CGN should be considered in children with predisposing cardiac disease, who develop hematuria, proteinuria, and severe AKI. Although antibiotic therapy alone is often sufficient in this immune complex GN induced by infection, early initiation of additional immunosuppressive therapy in the presence of CGN may be beneficial for long term preservation of kidney functions.

Pertussis or whooping cough is a vaccine-preventable disease that still remains a serious infection in neonates and young infants. The disease is particularly severe in infants less than three months old, who are often infected by their parents. Congenital nephrotic syndrome is a rare entity presenting within the first three months. It encompasses a heterogeneous group of entities with genetic, infectious and idiopathic etiologies. In this report we describe a newborn infant who presented with congenital nephrotic syndrome secondary to Bordetella pertussis infection.

Primary hypertension is the most important risk factor for chronic kidney disease in adulthood. However, the role of hypertension in kidney damage in childhood is not known exactly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ambulatory blood pressure measurements of healthy children diagnosed as hypertensive with routine office blood pressure monitoring and to investigate the effects of primary hypertension on the kidney. Fifty-six patients who had blood pressure higher than 90th percentile during their well-child follow-up and 27 healthy children with normal blood pressure were included in the study. Twenty-four hour blood pressure measurements were recorded for all the patients. Microalbumin and N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) levels in the 24-hour urine were determined in the study groups. According to the results of ambulatory blood pressure measurements, 52% of the patients were diagnosed as white coat hypertension. The patients and the white coat hypertensive group had higher levels of urinary NAG than the control group. No significant difference was found in the levels of urinary microalbumin excretion between the primary hypertension and control groups. It was thought that ambulatory blood pressure measurement was necessary for the true diagnosis of hypertension in children, and further, that primary and white coat hypertension had effects on kidney damage in childhood. It is suggested that urine NAG excretion might be used as an early sign of hypertension-induced renal damage.

Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a clinical and radiologic entity characterized by headache, seizures, visual changes, altered mental status, and focal neurologic signs. Typically, PRES involves the parietooccipital lobes; however, it can involve atypical localizations such as frontal lobe, basal ganglia, thalamus, brainstem, and gray matter. Sudden increases in blood pressure and associated renal failure are probably the most frequently encountered etiologies in the literature. Recurrence of PRES is not common. In this article, we present recurrent atypical PRES in a hypertensive child with end-stage renal disease on a peritoneal dialysis program as a rare case and we discuss recurrence. Infections and sudden increase in blood pressure were observed as the causes of recurrent PRES in our patient. The reversibility of PRES depends on immediate diagnosis and therapy; therefore, it should be kept in mind in the differential diagnosis of seizures or coma in chronic kidney disease patients.