Treating Nephrotic Syndrome without Using Hormone Therapy?

I. How to regard hormone therapy in treating Nephrotic Syndrome?
We all know that hormone therapy is commonly used in treating kidney diseases including Nephrotic Syndrome. The reason is that hormone does have the effect of controlling the disease in a short time. However, many patients with kidney disease will turn pale at the mention of hormone. The reason lies in its side effects and its only curing the symptoms instead of the disease which will cause relapse of the disease once and again. Therefore, we shouldn’t arbitrarily judge hormone as good or bad. Moreover, we should use it carefully, such as avoiding stopping using it suddenly; otherwise, it will easily cause many side effects.
II. To make out whether we can treat NS without hormone, we should also know the pathogenesis of NS and how hormone takes effect in treating this disease.
Nephrotic Syndrome is a group of glomerulopathy that has similar pathological changes and clinical manifestations. The main changes are strengthened permeability of the glomerular membrane and decrease of GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate). The typical manifestations include massive proteinuria, Hypoproteinemia, severe edema and Hyperlipemia.
Then how does hormone take effect in treating NS? Hormone has the function of inhibiting immunocytes and organic immunoreaction, so it can reduce damage of the renal intrinsic cells by immune complex. At the same time, it can protect intercellular matrix by balancing generation and degradation of polysaccharide. So hormone can effectively control the progress of the disease, especially the acute and active stage of NS.
Different pathological types of primary Nephrotic Syndrome should be treated with different application method of hormone, but the common adverse effect of it should be paid attention to: central obesity, high blood pressure, osteoporosis; digestive tract symptoms like nausea, vomiting and stress ulcer; spiritual symptoms like insomnia and excitation.
III. New therapy of treating Nephrotic Syndrome—significant effect of Micro-Chinese Medicine
Here, we can see that it is not easy to get rid of hormone completely. But don’t get discouraged, we have an effective way of avoid the side effects of hormone to a large extent—to combine hormone therapy with traditional Chinese medicine treatment, which has great power to reduce the side effects of hormone. Moreover, traditional Chinese medicine also has good curative effect in treating NS.