KIM-1 is a universal biomarker of kidney pathologies: True or false?

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, the world has witnessed a dramatic increase in the prevalence of diabetes and its many complications. One of these, diabetic nephropathy, is currently the leading cause of end-stage renal disease worldwide, at a tremendous human and economic cost. Comprehensive understanding of the many complex pathophysiological mechanisms and their mutual interrelationship will be mandatory to facilitate the development of novel preventive and therapeutic regimens for diabetic nephropathy.In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the search for biomarkers of acute and chronic damage kidneys, which allows for early detection of pathological changes in the kidneys and to determine their nature, differentiate lesions of different parts of the nephron, reliable establish the pathological stage process. The search for biomarkers for increased risk for diabetic kidney disease have usually been hypothesis driven and have several markers have been suggested, but so far none of the markers have been implemented in clinical care, as validation, and confirmation of added value beyond the existing risk markers still has to be proven.The review presents literature data on preclinical and experimental studies.