Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about nephrotic syndrome.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zerodefinals.com slash nephrotic syndrome

or in the renal and neurology section of the Zero Definals Pediatrics book.

So let's get straight into it.

Nephrotic syndrome occurs when the basement membrane in the glomerulus in the kidneys

becomes highly permeable to protein.

And this allows protein to leak from the blood into the urine.

It's most common between the ages of two and five years, and it presents with frothy urine,

generalized edema, and pallor.

Nephrotic syndrome features a classic triad that you need to remember for your exams of low serum

albumin, high urine protein content with more than three plus of protein on the urine dipstick,

and edema. So again that classic triad is low albumin, high urine protein and edema.

There are three other features that occur in patients with nephotic syndrome.

The first is deranged lipid profile with a high level of cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipoproteins.

The second is a high blood pressure, and the third is hyper-coagulability,

with an increased tendency to form blood clots. So what the cause is of nephotic syndrome? The most

common cause in children is something called minimal change disease,

which causes about 95% of cases in children under 10 years.

In minimal change disease, nephotic syndrome occurs in isolation

without any clear underlying condition or pathology.

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