Discovery of urine biomarkers for lupus nephritis via quantitative and comparative proteome analysis

Abstract

Lupus nephritis (LN) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).1 Noninvasively obtainable biomarkers for LN could greatly improve early LN detection. In this study, we found that urine alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (ORM1) is a promising biomarker for early LN detection. Furthermore, with regard to histologic features, urine haemoglobin subunit delta (HBD) accurately discriminated proliferative LN from nonproliferative LN and correlated with activity index.