Urinary Biomarkers for Acute Kidney Injury Diagnosis

University of Pittsburgh and Astute Medical researchers have identified urinary biomarkers capable of diagnosing acute kidney injury (AKI).

Description

AKI places a huge economic burden on healthcare systems and is a key indicator of morbidity and mortality in patients. This risk of mortality increases with severity of AKI. Previous work from this team has shown the non-sulfonated glycosaminoglycan hyaluronic acid (HA) levels in urine to be a useful predictor of recovery from AKI. HA has the potential to be a more sensitive and specific marker of AKI and its use in early diagnosis, disease monitoring and determining prognosis could improve patient outcomes through early and more targeted treatment plans.

Applications

1. Diagnosis of AKI
2. Disease staging to stratify long-term risk to patients
3. Determining the efficacy of treatments for AKI

Advantages

Current biomarkers, such as serum creatinine levels, are ineffective at detecting AKI at early stages. This inefficiency can delay patient diagnosis and treatment, leading to poorer health outcomes and increased mortality.

HA is widely distributed in the body and plays a key role in regeneration functions, including tissue repair and remodeling. However, during tissue injury, HA accumulates, leading to inflammation at the injury site, with prolonged accumulation leading to persistent inflammation. Given this relationship between injury and HA accumulation, the urinary HA level has the potential to be more sensitive and specific as a biomarker for AKI, increasing the speed of diagnosis and access to treatment.

Invention Readiness

Animal studies have shown that following administration of a nephrotoxin (folic acid), AKI was detected through measurement of urinary HA. This result confirms the ability of urinary HA to detect AKI early, in addition to the previous work from these researchers, demonstrating HA's potential to predict those most at risk of requiring long-term dialysis following AKI. With the identification of HA as a biomarker of interest, further work is required to develop testing approaches and validate clinically normal ranges to allow this test to be used more widely.

IP Status

https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2619231B1