Simple Saliva Test May Help Diagnose Kidney Disease

A preliminary study suggests that a dipstick test for salivary urea nitrogen could be accurate for diagnosing kidney disease and may help predict patients' risk of early death. The test would be especially helpful in developing countries where simple and inexpensive tools for diagnosing kidney disease are most needed.

The study was highlighted at the American Society of Nephrology’s (Washington, DC, USA) Kidney Week 2016 (November 15-20, Chicago, IL, USA), and summarized in Abstract 5710 under the title "Saliva Urea Nitrogen Dipstick: a simple tool to detect and stratify risk of renal disease in low resource settings."

Viviane Calice-Silva, MD, PhD, of the Pro-Kidney Foundation in Brazil, and colleagues evaluated the diagnostic performance of a salivary urea nitrogen (SUN) dipstick in Malawi, Africa, a low-resource country. Among 742 adult individuals who were studied, investigators diagnosed 146 patients with kidney disease using standard tests. High SUN levels were associated not only with the standard diagnostic tests, but also with a higher risk of early death.

"Our data suggest that SUN can improve the detection of kidney disease, increasing the awareness to this devastating complication," said Dr. Calice-Silva, "Also, higher awareness and detection of kidney disease in low-resource settings may increase the number of patients who are diagnosed and referred, therefore providing appropriate treatment and improving outcomes."

Related Links:
American Society of Nephrology