Part 1 of a two-part series on kidney disease. Part 2 is here.
In up to 5 percent of all pregnancies, children are born with some degree of kidney dilation or swelling, known as hydronephrosis. Unfortunately, says urologist Richard Lee, MD, of Boston Children’s Hospital, “many of these kids go through a lot of testing after birth and are followed for a long period of time—sometimes unnecessarily.”
Hoping to reduce such testing, Lee and his colleagues are turning to urine. They’ve been collecting comprehensive data on the urinary proteome—all the proteins urine normally contains. With this baseline information, they hope to establish biomarkers that identify kidney damage.
In a recently published study, Lee and his coauthors compared the urinary proteomes of healthy infant boys versus men to find out what happens naturally with age. Through their work, they identified nearly 1,600 protein groups and determined that the healthy male urinary proteome changes over time. …