Quality of Life in Patients with Minimal Change Nephrotic Syndrome

AIM The goal of the study was to investigate quality of life (QOL) in adult patients with minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MCNS) and to test the relationship of QOL with the level of self-care. MATERIALS AND METHODS We distributed two questionnaires to 30 outpatients with MCNS. The MOS 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36v2) was used to examine health-related QOL in comparison with normative data from the general Japanese population and a population with two chronic diseases. SF-36v2 consists of 36 questions classified into 8 subscales. We also used the Self-Care Behavior Scale for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), which consists of 31 questions with 4 subscales. RESULTS The SF-36v2 social functioning subscale was most impaired and bodily pain was least affected in patients with MCNS. The self-care subscales of information/communication and positive behavior had positive correlations with the QOL subscales of mental health (P<0.05) and vitality (P<0.05). The correlation between social functioning and information/communication was close to significant (P=0.051). CONCLUSION In MCNS, social functioning was particularly impaired. Our results suggest that better self-care can have a positive impact on QOL in patients with MCNS.