Urinary Proteomics in Nephrotic Syndrome

Nephrotic syndrome is the commonest glomerular disease. Typical symptoms could be proteinuria, low serum albumin and oedema. The mechanism of proteinuria in nephrotic syndrome is a defective glomerular filtration barrier. Renal biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosis of nephrotic syndrome currently which is invasive and based on histopathological features, therefore it seems to be necessary to search for noninvasive biomarkers to be used as the complementary tests in the diagnostics and prognostics of glomerular diseases, particularly when renal biopsy is limited or contraindicated. While a big proportion of urinary proteins originate from kidney tissue and these tissue specific proteins excrete more in kidney injury, therefore the identification of urinary proteins can further our understanding of renal dysfunction and renal disease including nephrotic syndrome. The interest of scientist to urinary proteomics is also growing for biomarker discovery. This review focuses on some types of nephrotic syndrome and proteomic studies applying urine specimen which have been reported.