Spring Clinical Meetings is a great occasion for renal health care providers to get insights to development in the field of nephrology. This year the meeting will be in Austin Texas April 11 to April 15. We're excited to attend the event, and you will find us at booth #917 eager to talk about cystatin C and kidney health. Don’t miss this chance to learn more about one of this year’s most talked-about diagnostic tools in the kidney care space.
The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is used to diagnose chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cystatin C is an established marker for estimating glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Recently the scientific community has demonstrated that measuring both creatinine and cystatin C gives a significant advantage when estimating the eGFR. One advantage of measuring cystatin C in addition to creatinine is the increased accuracy achieved partially due to cystatin C being less susceptible to factors that affect muscle mass like age, diet, sex, physical activity, etc.1-8
The heightened interest in eGFR equations has its origin from the movement among US medical students that questioned the use of a race coefficient in the calculation of eGFR, and the impact its use can have in healthcare disparities faced by African Americans.
As an answer to the movement a joint task force with the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and the American Society of Nephrology was established to reassess the inclusion of race in diagnosing kidney disease. Based on input collected over 10 months from hundreds of patients, patient advocates, medical students, clinicians and scientists, the task force recommends "increased use of cystatin C combined with serum creatinine, as a confirmatory assessment of GFR or kidney function."
The European Kidney Function Consortium (EKFC) has also followed up on the initiative from the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-Epi), addressing the race factor in eGFR equations, in a recent study with data from over 227 000 patients. Their newly developed cystatin C based eGFR equation does not rely on factors for race and gender and can estimate the GFR without compromising on accuracy versus creatinine equations.
Gentian's cystatin C immunoassay is applied to turbidimetry-based clinical chemistry platforms. It is an open channel assay, meaning it can be added to all clinical chemistry analysers.
Explore cystatin C in your lab or clinical practice - fill out the form below or send an email to marketing@gentian.com for more information about the product and prices.