Nephropathia epidemica. The Scandinavian form of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

We report epidemiologic, clinical, laboratory, and biopsy findings in 14 cases of nephropathia epidemica. The patients were between 19 and 49 years of age. The onset of the disease was characterized by high fever, nausea, headache, backache, abdominal pain, proteinuria, oliguria, hematuria, and uremia. The symptoms subsided rapidly during the polyuria phase, which followed the oliguria stage. Because of renal failure, hemodialysis was required in eight cases. Edema of eyelids, conjunctival injection and hemorrhages, transitory myopia, and acute glaucoma were the most common eye abnormalities. Renal biopsy specimens showed glomerular changes, with mild swelling of the epithelial cells of Bowman's capsule, thickening of the basement membrane of glomerular capillaries, glomerular adhesions, inflammatory cell infiltration, leukocytoclasis and hemorrhages in the interstitium, and eosinophilic hyaline degeneration and vacuolization of the epithelial cells of the proximal tubuli.