Patients
The study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki
and approved by Committee on Research Ethics of Tongji Hospital,
Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Renal biopsy was
performed in 205 Chinese adult patients aged between 18 and 70 years
with IgAN between June 2009 to June 2010. All patients met the
diagnostic criteria for IgAN, which was published by the Oxford
classification working group [14]. Patients were excluded if they
had received glucocorticoids or immunosuppressants treatment before
renal biopsy; if they had HBV infection or liver chirosis; if they had a
concomitant autoimmne disease ; or if they did not have complete
follow-up data. 136 patients were eventually enrolled into this study
(Figure 1).