Figure 8

Morphologic features as a function of age in mice of the three MRL/ lpr γ3 heavy chain genotypes. The percentage of renal glomeruli exhibiting either endocapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis (A, top panel) or glomerulosclerosis (B, bottom panel) is plotted as a function of age for mice of each genotype. In +/+ mice (green squares) and +/- mice (yellow diamonds), there is marked loss of functional glomeruli (with endocapillary proliferation) by 26 weeks, with a reciprocal gain in irreversibly scarred glomeruli. In contrast, -/- mice (red circles) exhibit sustained endocapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis as late as 26 weeks, whereas the fraction of scarred glomeruli is only minimally increased.