[Diagnosis usefulness of beta-2 microglobulin in clinical practice]

The laboratory diagnostics is mostly based on proteins determination and this tendency has been developed lately. It especially concerns the determination of the low molecular weight proteins. One of them became beta 2-microglobulin (beta 2-M), whose role in the organism and diagnostics is presently investigated. In this paper, the general characteristic of beta 2-M has been given including the usefulness in clinical diagnostics. A great part of this paper concerns role of this protein in nephrological diagnostics (early detection and localization of disorder, selective evaluation of filtration and resorption function, assessment of the degree of glomerules and tubules damage) and its significance in this field is without question. A very important problem is the determination of beta 2-M both in serum and urine, giving full information about renal dysfunction. The usefulness of beta 2-microglobulin in diagnosing cancer also has been described and discussed, and this protein can be used as a relatively sensitive marker of treatment in selected leukaemias. A beta 2-M usefulness in diagnostics has been presented in other diseases too, but it is worthy to note that the value of this test presently is not fully appreciated by clinicians.