Comparison of Plasma and Urine Biomarker Performance in Acute Kidney Injury

New renal biomarkers measured in urine promise to increase specificity for risk stratification and early diagnosis of acute kidney injury (AKI) but concomitantly may be altered by urine concentration effects and chronic renal insufficiency. This study therefore directly compared the performance of AKI biomarkers in urine and plasma.

This single-center, prospective cohort study included 110 unselected adults undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass between 2009 and 2010. Plasma and/or urine concentrations of creatinine, cystatin C, neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), liver fatty acid-binding protein (L-FABP), kidney injury molecule 1 (KIM1), and albumin as well as 15 additional biomarkers in plasma and urine were measured during the perioperative period. The primary outcome was AKI defined by AKIN serum creatinine criteria within 72 hours after surgery.

Biomarkers in plasma showed markedly better discriminative performance for preoperative risk stratification and early postoperative (within 24h after surgery) detection of AKI than urine biomarkers. Discriminative power of urine biomarkers improved when concentrations were normalized to urinary creatinine, but urine biomarkers had still lower AUC values than plasma biomarkers. Best diagnostic performance 4h after surgery had plasma NGAL (AUC 0.83), cystatin C (0.76), MIG (0.74), and L-FAPB (0.73). Combinations of multiple biomarkers did not improve their diagnostic power. Preoperative clinical scoring systems (EuroSCORE and Cleveland Clinic Foundation Score) predicted the risk for AKI (AUC 0.76 and 0.71) and were not inferior to biomarkers. Preexisting chronic kidney disease limited the diagnostic performance of both plasma and urine biomarkers.

In our cohort plasma biomarkers had higher discriminative power for risk stratification and early diagnosis of AKI than urine biomarkers. For preoperative risk stratification of AKI clinical models showed similar discriminative performance to biomarkers. The discriminative performance of both plasma and urine biomarkers was reduced by preexisting chronic kidney disease.