New method for diagnosis of kidney disease in dogs

Capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry analysis demonstrated presence of approximately 5400 peptides in dog urine. Comparison of urinary peptide abundance of dogs with and without CKD led to the identification of 133 differentially excreted peptides (adjusted P for each peptide <0.05). Sequence information was obtained for 35 of these peptides. This 35 peptide subset and the total group of 133 peptides were used to construct two predictive models of CKD which were subsequently validated by researchers masked to results in an independent cohort of 20 dogs.

Both models diagnosed CKD with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.88 (95% confidence intervals [CI], 0.72–1.0). Most differentially excreted peptides represented fragments of collagen I, indicating possible association with fibrotic processes in CKD (similar to the equivalent human urinary peptide CKD model, CKD273).

This first study of the urinary peptidome in dogs identified peptides that were associated with presence of CKD. Future studies are needed to validate the utility of this model for diagnosis and prediction of progression of canine CKD in a clinical setting.

Link to the publication

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tvjl.2019.05.010

Reference

L. Pelander, V. Brunchault, B. Buffin-Meyer, J. Klein, B. Breuil, P. Zürbig, P. Magalhães, W. Mullen, J. Elliott, H. Syme, J.P. Schanstra, J. Häggström, I. Ljungvall. Urinary peptidome analyses for the diagnosis of chronic kidney disease in dogs. The Veterinary Journal (2019), volume 249, pages 73-79.