Biomarkers: Acute kidney injury

Abstract

Biomarkers can be measured objectively and can assess physiological as well as pathological process or pharmacological response or helps in deciding therapeutic intervention or prognostication of disease. Biomarkers can be clinical as well as molecular. Kidney is one of the vital organs of human body and has mainly excretory functions. Acute kidney injury is independent risk factor for morbidity and mortality and early intervention has better prognosis. Defining acute kidney injury is still a big issues and various classifications have been proposed but none is suitable to define or identify sub-acute injury to such a vital organ. Measurement of serum creatinine and urine output have been used in almost all definitions but do not pick up early sub-clinical damage associated with normal serum creatinine and urine output. Recently study of general and novel biomarkers have helped in defining the sub-clinical damage, early therapeutic intervention and prognosis of child with acute kidney injury.