APOL1 in an ethnically diverse pediatric population with nephrotic syndrome: implications in focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and other diagnoses.

Background: APOL1 high-risk genotypes (HRG) are associated with increased risk of kidney disease in individuals of African ancestry. We analyzed the effects of APOL1 risk variants on an ethnically diverse Brazilian pediatric nephrotic syndrome (NS) cohort.

Methods: Multicenter study including 318 NS patients, categorized as progressors to advanced CKD [estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)] < 30 mL/min/1.

Promises and pitfalls of whole-exome sequencing exemplified by a nephrotic syndrome family.

High-throughput techniques such as whole-exome sequencing (WES) show promise for the identification of candidate genes that underlie Mendelian diseases such as nephrotic syndrome (NS). These techniques have enabled the identification of a proportion of the approximately 54 genes associated with NS. However, the main pitfall of using WES in clinical and research practice is the identification of multiple variants, which hampers interpretation during downstream analysis.