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Objectives . Key aims of the treatment of lupus nephritis (LN) are to induce and maintain remission with minimal side effects. However, assessing ongoing renal inflammatory activity is poorly served by current diagnostic tests apart from renal biopsy, but frequent biopsies cannot be justified. Our long-term aim is to identify novel biomarkers from urinary protein profiles to improve diagnosis and monitoring of activity and response to therapy in LN.

Methods. We used surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) to identify biomarkers able to discriminate between urine samples from patients with inactive ( n = 49) and active ( n = 26) LN. Discriminant function analysis was used to define the minimum number of proteins whose levels best distinguished between the two patient groups. Serial urines of six …