Urine albumin is a major clinical biomarker of acute and chronic renal failure. Acute renal failure can stem from several conditions, such as reduced blood flow to kidneys, direct damage to kidneys, or blockage of urine flow in kidneys. These conditions can be caused by traumatic kidney injury, dehydration, sepsis, prostate enlargement, drug toxicity, pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, or an autoimmune disease. Unlike acute renal failure, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is marked by kidney failure that persists for 3 months or greater with the two most common causes of CKD being diabetes (types 1 and 2) and high blood pressure. Due to the severity of the conditions that stem from kidney dysfunction, accurate measurement of urine albumin is vital to the clinical diagnosis of renal dysfunction and the evaluation of treatment efficacy. Therefore, to support the accuracy and comparability of clinical urine albumin measurements, NIST has partnered with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry (IFCC) Working Group for the Standardization of Albumin Assays in Urine (WG-SAU) to develop a reference measurement system for urine albumin. NIST will develop the foundational components of the reference measurement system, a series of higher-order reference materials and a mass spectrometry-based measurement procedure, to establish traceability of routine clinical urine albumin measurements to the International System of Units (SI). This will ultimately create a link between clinical patient results and the SI unit via a well-defined human urine-based standard reference material, which will enhance the accuracy and confidence of clinical decisions for kidney disease.

Use of analytical chemistry in the standardization of clinical diagnostics for kidney disease

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.