BACKGROUND Results of cross-sectional analyses of the association of kidney function with bone mineral density (BMD) have been conflicting. We examined the association of cystatin-C, a new marker of kidney function that is unrelated to lean mass, with initial and follow-up BMD, in an ancillary study of the Cardiovascular Health Study, a population-based cohort of individuals > or = 65 years old...

BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies show that high circulating cystatin C is associated with risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), independent of creatinine-based renal function measurements. It is unclear whether this relationship is causal, arises from residual confounding, and/or is a consequence of reverse causation. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to use Mendelian randomization to inve...

Cystatin F is an unusual member of the cystatin family of protease inhibitors, which is made as an inactive dimer and becomes activated by proteolysis in the endo/lysosome pathway of the immune cells that produce it. However a proportion is secreted and can be taken up and activated by other cells. We show here that cystatin F acquired in this way induces a dramatic accumulation of the single-c...

OBJECTIVE Patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma experience highly variable outcomes despite receiving similar therapeutic regimens. Identifying biomarkers that predict survival and guide individualized therapy is urgently needed. Cystatin C has been explored as a valuable prognostic marker in several malignancies. We retrospectively assessed the relationship between serum cystatin C levels and...

Sir, The paper by Kimmel et al. [1] concludes that cystatin C blood level variations are a more reliable parameter than serum creatinine increments for the diagnosis of contrastinduced nephropathy (CIN). However, this conclusion does not seem sufficiently supported by the data to us. Since the definition of CIN is based on serum creatinine variations, it is not clear what the meaning is of the ...

Background: There is limited data regarding the clinical utility of cystatin C in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD). The aim of this study was to determine the predictive value of cystatin C for the presence and severity of CAD and the association between this protein and other biochemical risk factors for atherosclerosis in patients with suspected CAD. Methods: Ninety-four pat...

AIMS Serum cystatin C, a novel marker of kidney function, is reported to be superior to serum creatinine as a risk factor for atherosclerotic disease, but associations may vary across vascular beds. METHODS AND RESULTS A cross-sectional study of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in 3089 adult participants aged 40+ from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutriti...

With the development of highly active antiretroviral therapy, chronic kidney disease has become a prominent cause of morbidity in individuals infected by HIV. Because serum creatinine has significant limitations in this specific population, cystatin C is emerging as a promising biomarker for both the evaluation of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and the detection of drug-induced kidney injury....

Cystatins are a family of naturally occurring cysteine protease inhibitors, yet the target proteases and biological processes they regulate are poorly understood. Cystatin F is expressed selectively in immune cells and is the only cystatin to be synthesised as an inactive disulphide-linked dimeric precursor. Here, we show that a major target of cystatin F in different immune cell types is the a...

OBJECTIVE To compare serum cystatin C levels, a novel biomarker of renal function, in adolescents with and without type 1 diabetes and to determine what factors affect cystatin C levels. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Cystatin C was measured in youth 12-19 years of age with (n = 259, diabetes duration 9 ± 3 years, HbA(1c) 8.9 ± 1.6%) and without diabetes (n = 78). Data were compared by diabetes ...