Nowadays, renal disease is an important public health problem, affecting millions of people in Brazil and in the world. The study of renal function and renal pathologic processes has aroused the interest of researchers, mainly in the field of development of new assays that could aid physicians in establishing early diagnosis, better classifying the disease, obtaining better outcome and monitoring drug therapeutics. In this article, seven laboratory markers of renal function or damage are evaluated: urea, creatinine, cystatin C, proteinuria, dysmorphic erythrocytes, microalbuminuria and liver-type fatty acid binding protein (L-FABP). For each one of them, a short historical report of its clinical utility and physiopathology is presented. Then technical and methodological approaches are described as well as its utility in clinical management of kidney patients. Although improvements have been reached and incorporated in laboratorial practice, none of these markers is effective enough to define precisely kidney function and/or damage and an extensive understanding of all of these markers is crucial to correct evaluate renal function.
Renal function; Renal damage; Glomerular filtration rate; Laboratorial tests
