Nail-Patella Syndrome

The nail-patella syndrome is considered to be an autosomal dominant hereditary disease.1It is manifested by a variety of bone and other abnormalities, such as absence or hypoplasia of the patellae, hemidysplasia of certain nails, particularly of the thumb, subluxation of the radial heads at the elbow joints, iliac horns, thickening of the scapulae, heterochromia iridis, etc. It is also known that proteinuria is found in about 40% of the affected patients.2,3 Although a dozen or so histopathological studies of the renal lesions are available,4-14,16four of which include electron microscopy,11,13,14,16the presumably characteristic features of the disease were described only once.16 We have examined with light and electron microscopy kidney biopsy specimens in two cases in a family— father and son. The father was already in uremia and the son had only asymptomatic proteinuria. The purpose of this paper is to describe the