Objective:

To provide current information about the progress of the last ten years reported to improve the diagnosis of kidney disease with markers such as cystatin C, with other usual analytes used in clinical practice.

Materials and methods:

A search for original and review articles in english and spanish in the last ten years was carried out in the following databases: MedLine, Library Plus, Pro-Quest, NCBI and ScienceDirect.

Results:

For the evaluation of renal function markers are used such as creatinine and blood urea nitrogen. However, these tests are sometimes determined to different sources of biological variability, which is why the need to identify other markers that detect kidney damage early, and that is not influenced by pacific-dependent factors such as Cystatin C, a molecular protein of low molecular weight proposed as a marker of renal function more accurate, specific and sensitive than creatinine in modifying the glomerular filtration rate.

Conclusion:

Cystatin C meets with characteristics that make it a more useful biomarker in the determination of renal injury, since it shows greater diagnostic utility than serum creatinine to detect early renal damage, however, it is not used as a routine test in the diagnosis of renal pathologies due to its high cost when assembling in the clinical laboratory.

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