- May, Rebecca M;
- Cassol, Clarissa;
- Hannoudi, Andrew;
- Larsen, Christopher P;
- Lerma, Edgar V;
- Haun, Randy S;
- Braga, Juarez R;
- Hassen, Samar I;
- Wilson, Jon;
- VanBeek, Christine;
- Vankalakunti, Mahesha;
- Barnum, Lilli;
- Walker, Patrick D;
- Bourne, T David;
- Messias, Nidia C;
- Ambruzs, Josephine M;
- Boils, Christie L;
- Sharma, Shree S;
- Cossey, L Nicholas;
- Baxi, Pravir V;
- Palmer, Matthew;
- Zuckerman, Jonathan E;
- Walavalkar, Vighnesh;
- Urisman, Anatoly;
- Gallan, Alexander J;
- Al-Rabadi, Laith F;
- Rodby, Roger;
- Luyckx, Valerie;
- Espino, Gustavo;
- Santhana-Krishnan, Srivilliputtur;
- Alper, Brent;
- Lam, Son G;
- Hannoudi, Ghadeer N;
- Matthew, Dwight;
- Belz, Mark;
- Singer, Gary;
- Kunaparaju, Srikanth;
- Price, Deborah;
- Chawla, Saurabh;
- Rondla, Chetana;
- Abdalla, Mazen A;
- Britton, Marcus L;
- Paul, Subir;
- Ranjit, Uday;
- Bichu, Prasad;
- Williamson, Sean R;
- Sharma, Yuvraj;
- Gaspert, Ariana;
- Grosse, Philipp;
- Meyer, Ian;
- Vasudev, Brahm;
- El Kassem, Mohamad;
- Velez, Juan Carlos Q;
- Caza, Tiffany N
Kidney failure is common in patients with Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19), resulting in increased morbidity and mortality. In an international collaboration, 284 kidney biopsies were evaluated to improve understanding of kidney disease in COVID-19. Diagnoses were compared to five years of 63,575 native biopsies prior to the pandemic and 13,955 allograft biopsies to identify diseases that have increased in patients with COVID-19. Genotyping for APOL1 G1 and G2 alleles was performed in 107 African American and Hispanic patients. Immunohistochemistry for SARS-CoV-2 was utilized to assess direct viral infection in 273 cases along with clinical information at the time of biopsy. The leading indication for native biopsy was acute kidney injury (45.4%), followed by proteinuria with or without concurrent acute kidney injury (42.6%). There were more African American patients (44.6%) than patients of other ethnicities. The most common diagnosis in native biopsies was collapsing glomerulopathy (25.8%), which was associated with high-risk APOL1 genotypes in 91.7% of cases. Compared to the five-year biopsy database, the frequency of myoglobin cast nephropathy and proliferative glomerulonephritis with monoclonal IgG deposits was also increased in patients with COVID-19 (3.3% and 1.7%, respectively), while there was a reduced frequency of chronic conditions (including diabetes mellitus, IgA nephropathy, and arterionephrosclerosis) as the primary diagnosis. In transplants, the leading indication was acute kidney injury (86.4%), for which rejection was the predominant diagnosis (61.4%). Direct SARS-CoV-2 viral infection was not identified. Thus, our multi-center large case series identified kidney diseases that disproportionately affect patients with COVID-19 and demonstrated a high frequency of APOL1 high-risk genotypes within this group, with no evidence of direct viral infection within the kidney.