Transcript
Announcer:
You’re listening to Clinician’s Roundtable on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Abdallah Geara, who will be discussing the importance of early diagnosis to the management of IgA nephropathy. Dr. Geara is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and the Clinical Director of the Glomerular Disease Program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He also spoke at the 2026 National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meeting. Here’s Dr. Geara now.
Dr. Geara:
Knowing that the IgA nephropathy is a progressive kidney disease, it is important to diagnose a patient quite early in their clinical course. We know that the majority of patients currently are diagnosed with chronic kidney disease stage three, where kidney damage is already established.
So we know that almost 75 percent of patients have already established kidney damage and diagnosis.
So early diagnosis is important to implement the right therapy and, with the current approach to therapy, we have a lot of options that can be implemented very early on in the clinical course that will significantly change the outcome of these patients.
Therapy for IgA nephropathy has evolved significantly over the last few years. We currently have five medications that are either fully approved or have gone through the acceleration approval process and are available for our patients.
The most recent therapy approved for IgA nephropathy addresses a pathway of the immune system called APRIL. So by blocking the APRIL pathway, we're finding very good results as far as progression of chronic kidney disease and controlling the proteinuria and hematuria.
In addition to this, there are four other therapies that are addressing the complement pathway, and also specifically target the release of budesonide, and that addresses the IgA formation at the level of the gut.
So all of these mechanisms are novel therapies for IgA nephropathy that are changing, significantly, the clinical course of these patients.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Abdallah Geara talking about how early diagnosis can help improve outcomes for IgA nephropathy patients. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Clinician’s Roundtable on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
