title: Urinary vimentin mRNA as a potential novel biomarker of renal fibrosis.
abstract: Renal fibrosis is a histological outcome of chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression. However, the noninvasive detection of renal fibrosis remains a challenge. Here we constructed a renal fibrosis target mRNA array and used it to detect urinary mRNAs of CKD patients for investigating potential noninvasive biomarkers of renal fibrosis. We collected urine samples from 39 biopsy-proven CKD patients and 11 healthy controls in the training set. Urinary mRNA profiles of 86 genes showed a total of 21 mRNAs that were differentially expressed between CKD patients and controls (P < 0.05), and vimentin (VIM) mRNA demonstrated the highest change fold of 9.99 in CKD vs. controls with robust correlations with decline of renal function and severity of tubulointerstitial fibrosis. Additionally, VIM mRNA further differentiated patients with moderate-to-severe fibrosis from none-to-mild fibrosis group with an area of the curve of 0.796 (P = 0.008). A verification of VIM mRNA in the urine of an additional 96 patients and 20 controls showed that VIM is not only well correlated with renal function parameters but also correlated with proteinuria and renal fibrosis scores. Multiple logistic regression and receiver-operating characteristics analysis further showed that urine VIM mRNA is the best predictive parameter of renal fibrosis compared with estimated glomerular filtration rate, serum creatinine, and blood urea nitrogen. In addition, there is no improved predictive performance for the composite biomarkers to predict renal fibrosis severity compared with a single gene of VIM. Overall, urinary VIM mRNA might serve as a novel independent noninvasive biomarker to monitor the progression of kidney fibrosis.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China;
authors.forename: Yu-Han
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China;
authors.forename: Lin-Li
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Lv
authors.affiliation: Division of Nephrology, Taixing People's Hospital, Taixing, China; and.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Division of Nephrology, Jiangsu Jiangyin People's Hospital, Jiangyin, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China;
authors.forename: Li-Hong
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Division of Nephrology, Taixing People's Hospital, Taixing, China; and.
authors.forename: Di
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Division of Nephrology, Jiangsu Jiangyin People's Hospital, Jiangyin, China.
authors.forename: Ying-Zi
authors.initials: YZ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China;
authors.forename: Hai-Feng
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Ni
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China;
authors.forename: Ping-Sheng
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nephrology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China; liubc64@163.com.
authors.forename: Bi-Cheng
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D005355:Fibrosis; D005919:Glomerular Filtration Rate; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays; D006801:Humans; D007668:Kidney / Q000473:pathology; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D007677:Kidney Function Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism*; D012372:ROC Curve; D051436:Renal Insufficiency, Chronic / Q000652:urine; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014746:Vimentin / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000652:urine*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D014746:Vimentin
keywords: VIM; biomarker; renal tubulointerstitial fibrosis; urinary mRNA; vimentin