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).