title: Urinary biomarkers in lupus nephritis.
abstract: There has long been a need for biomarkers of disease activity in lupus nephritis (LN). Such markers ideally would be capable of detecting early sub-clinical disease and could be used to gauge response to therapy thus obviating the need for serial renal biopsies. Since urine can be readily obtained it lends itself as an obvious biological sample. Much of the focus has been on the measurement of urinary chemokines and cytokines in patients with LN. Elevations in urinary IL-6 and IL-10 had initially been reported to be associated with disease activity in LN but these markers have proven to be less reliable in larger studies. We and others have recently reported that MCP-1, a key chemokine involved in monocyte chemotaxis can be consistently found at high levels in the urine of patients with active LN. Moreover urinary MCP-1 levels decline with treatment of nephritis. In contrast urinary IL-8, a chemokine involved primarily in neutrophil chemotaxis is not a good predictor of disease activity in LN. Further longitudinal studies with larger numbers of patients are needed to determine the utility of urinary biomarkers such as MCP-1 which may act as surrogates of ongoing inflammation in LN.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610-0221, USA.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tucci
authors.forename: Sonali
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Narain
authors.forename: Elena V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Barnes
authors.forename: Eric S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Sobel
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Segal
authors.forename: Hanno B
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Richards
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis / Q000652:urine*; D018932:Chemokine CCL2 / Q000652:urine*; D054407:Chemokine CCL4; D016753:Interleukin-10 / Q000652:urine; D015850:Interleukin-6 / Q000652:urine; D016209:Interleukin-8 / Q000652:urine; D008181:Lupus Nephritis / Q000652:urine*; D019402:Macrophage Inflammatory Proteins / Q000652:urine
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; C111835:CCL2 protein, human; D018932:Chemokine CCL2; D054407:Chemokine CCL4; D015850:Interleukin-6; D016209:Interleukin-8; D019402:Macrophage Inflammatory Proteins; D016753:Interleukin-10