Microalbuminuria is prognostic of diabetic nephropathy, a condition that affects about 35% of Type I diabetics. It is estimated that the cost of care for uremic diabetic patients will soon reach $2 billion a year. Recent evidence indicates that early therapeutic intervention slows or halts the development of renal disease. The overall goal of the proposed project is to study the feasibility of developing a rapid, convenient and inexpensive test that can be used by non-laboratory personnel to measure low levels of urinary albumin. The test is based on a method whereby the albumin is first immobilized an concentrated by physical adsorption to a membrane. The immobilized albumin is then detected and quantitated by means of relatively specific albumin-binding dyes. Goals for this feasibility study are to identify membrane and dye combinations that will yield the optimum results. The use of immuno-enzyme and/or immuno-gold methods for detecting the bound albumin will also be investigated. With either detection system, the urinary albumin concentration will be estimated by measuring the developed color, either by visual comparison with a color chart or by means of a reflectance photometer. Use of membranes to immobilize and concentrate urinary albumin prior to detection and quantitation has not been described previously.
