Is Urine a Better Biomarker Source than blood?
Youhe Gao,
Professor,
Beijing Normal University
By nature, biomarker is the measurable change associated with a physiological or pathophysiological process. Unlike blood which has mechanisms to minimize changes and to keep the internal environment homeostatic, urine is more likely to reflect changes of the body and is a better biomarker source.
There are huge amount of clues accumulated in 300,000 papers in the past few decades for biomarkers in blood. Those potential biomarkers have probably never been tested in urine. Researchers and/or companies in biomarker field may easily take advantage of the free information and try to validate them in urine. New intellectual properties can be produced if any of the biomarkers works better in urine. Biomarker researchers who insist on working only in blood may face great risks of losing the value of their findings in blood, if somebody else validates them in urine independently.
The different homeostatic natures of urine and blood determined that the road to the biomarkers is drastically different. Despite the advantage of urine as a better biomarker source, urine biomarker research can be intimidated by the fact that changes in urine are much too complicated to sort out factors associated the disease using human samples. Simpler systems such as animal models should be used. Changes of urine in model animals were analyzed to establish the relation between the disease and the urinary effects. The result can then be validated in clinical samples.
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