Comparison of Various Equations for Estimating GFR in Malawi: How to Determine Renal Function in Resource Limited Settings?

• Main Authors: Nicola Glaser, Andreas Deckert, Sam Phiri, Dietrich Rothenbacher, Florian Neuhann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4470826?pdf=render

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a probably underrated public health problem in Sub-Saharan-Africa, in particular in combination with HIV-infection. Knowledge about the CKD prevalence is scarce and in the available literature different methods to classify CKD are used impeding comparison and general prevalence estimates.This study assessed different serum-creatinine based equations for glomerular filtration rates (eGFR) and compared them to a cystatin C based equation. The study was conducted in Lilongwe, Malawi enrolling a population of 363 adults of which 32% were HIV-positive.Comparison of formulae based on Bland-Altman-plots and accuracy revealed best performance for the CKD-EPI equation without the correction factor for black Americans. Analyzing the differences between HIV-positive and -negative individuals CKD-EPI systematically overestimated eGFR in comparison to cystatin C and therefore lead to underestimation of CKD in HIV-positives.Our findings underline the importance for standardization of eGFR calculation in a Sub-Saharan African setting, to further investigate the differences with regard to HIV status and to develop potential correction factors as established for age and sex.