Trench nephritis

The cause was not established at the time, treatments were ineffective, and the condition led to 35,000 British and 2,000 American casualties.

Soldiers presented with sudden-onset albuminuria, casts in urine, high blood pressure, swelling of legs or face, headache, sore throat and difficulty breathing and bronchitis.

Before the First World War, kidney diseases had been described in medical textbooks by physicians including Sir William Osler in 1909 and Marcus Seymour Pembrey in 1913.

[5][6] Thereafter, the Medical Research Council began to investigate the new disease at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and the findings were discussed during the Royal Society of Medicine meeting in February 1916, with Osler as one of the four key speakers.

[6] At the time, consensus held with some uncertainty that the then understood acute nephritis was due to toxins, not infection.

[3][7] Affected soldiers presented with sudden onset of albuminuria, high blood pressure, swelling of legs or face, headache, sore throat and difficulty breathing and bronchitis.

[2] Pathology revealed narrowing of small blood vessels in the kidneys, capillary thrombi, and a proliferation of cells affecting the capillary lumen, suggesting an underlying inflammation of blood vessels.