Glomerulonephritis in a patient with chronic active Epstein-Barr virus infection

Renal involvement is rare in chronic active Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. We report an 11-year-old girl who had focal mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis with cellular crescents and renal tubular atrophy with foam cells in the lumen at the time of the first admission. However, the patient was not diagnosed with chronic active EBV infection until the third admission, 18 months later, because she did not exhibit typical clinical manifestations of infectious mononucleosis, i.e., fever, lymphadenopathy, hepatomegaly, or increased atypical lymphocytes. We performed in situ hybridization of EBV in renal biopsy and renal autopsy tissue and found EBV genome-positive cells in the enlarged vascular areas surrounding the renal tubules in both specimens. The relationship between mesangial proliferative glomerulonephitis with crescents and chronic active EBV infection is unknown.