Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate From a Panel of Filtration Markers—Hope for Increased Accuracy Beyond Measured Glomerular Filtration Rate?

The recent Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes 2012 CKD guidelines recommend estimating GFR from serum creatinine (eGFR_cr) as a first-line test to assess kidney function and using cystatin C or measured glomerular filtration rate (GFR) as confirmatory tests. eGFR_cr may be inaccurate in people with variation in muscle mass or diet, and eGFR_cys is not more accurate than eGFR_cr. eGFR_crcys is more accurate than either, but it is not independent of eGFR_cr. Measured GFR is not practical and is susceptible to error due to variation in clearance methods and in the behavior of exogenous filtration markers. Over the past few years, we have hypothesized, and begun to test the hypothesis, that a panel of filtration markers (panel eGFR) from a single blood draw would require fewer demographic or clinical variables and could estimate GFR as accurately as measured GFR. In this article, we describe the conceptual background and rationale for this hypothesis and summarize our work thus far including evaluation of novel low-molecular-weight proteins and metabolites and then outline how we envision that such a panel could be used in clinical practice, research, and public health.