Urine Afamin and Afamin–Creatinine Ratio as Biomarkers for Kidney Injury

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the urine afamin (uAFM) and afamin–creatinine ratio (AfCR) levels in patients with glomerulonephritis. Patients & methods: We determined uAFM and AfCR of 247 healthy volunteers and 129 biopsy-proven glomerulonephritis patients. Results: Analytical evaluation study revealed the assay is a reliable and robust test for measuring uAFM. For reference intervals, uAFM and AfCR values were different significantly between males and females. uAFM and AfCR levels were significantly increased in patients with primary membranous nephropathy, IgA nephropathy and minimal change disease compared with healthy volunteers. uAFM and AfCR were positively correlated with urine albumin and albumin-creatinine ratio, respectively. Conclusion: Our study suggested that uAFM and AfCR may be attractive biomarkers for kidney injury.

Keywords: :

• afamin
• ELISA
• glomerulonephritis
• kidney injury
• urine

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/bmm-2018-0126

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.

Author’s contributions

L Pang and H Li contributed to the conception or design of the work. L Pang, N Duan, D Xu and Q Guo contributed to the acquisition of data for the work. L Pang, L Jia and C Huang contributed to the analysis of data for the work. L Pang, J Du and H Li contributed to the interpretation of data for the work. L Pang, N Duan, D Xu and H Li contributed to the drafting the work. L Jiao, C Huang, J Du and Q Guo contributed to the revising critically for important intellectual content. All the authors contributed to the final approval of the version to be published and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.