Phase 1 · Understand the Body — Why the disease behaves the way it does.
The One-Line Truth
The whole disease in one chain
Everything on this page exists to explain this line.
The glomerulus (kidney filter) is under immune attack, and its leaky barrier is letting blood and protein spill into the urine.
A stadium security checkpoint under siege
Imagine a stadium's security checkpoint where guards (podocytes) stand at turnstiles (basement membrane) checking IDs before fans enter the playing field (Bowman space). Normally, only tiny ticket stubs (water, salts, waste) slip through, while backpacks (red blood cells) and large jackets (albumin proteins) are held back. Now a rival gang (immune complexes) storms the checkpoint, fighting the guards and smashing the turnstiles. The guards are knocked over (podocytes detach), the turnstiles break (basement membrane holes), and suddenly backpacks and jackets tumble through onto the field (hematuria and proteinuria). The crowd piles up (inflammation swells the checkpoint), blocking more fans from entering (GFR drops). The stadium's security staff (RAAS compensation) overreact by letting more people stay inside and opening extra exits to boost volume, but this only causes overcrowding (edema, high blood pressure (hypertension)) and chaos (uremia) before the whole system collapses.
KDIGO 2021 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Glomerular Diseases · American Society of Nephrology (ASN) · National Kidney Foundation (NKF) · Cochrane systematic reviews on glomerulonephritis · reviewed 2026-07-07