ABSTRACT
Kidney is the main target organ of uranium after acute and chronic ingestion. Due to the lack of reliable biomarkers in the study of uranium-induced renal injury, the epidemiological data are not enough to quantify the effects of uranium on human health, and it leads to the inconclusive and inconsistent research results. This paper is focused on the analysis on research progression of domestic and foreign biomarkers of renal injury in uranium drinking water residents, uranium occupational exposure population and Gulf War veterans. The indicators including small molecular proteins and enzymes that reflect the damage of proximal and distal tubules and glomerular, such as β_2-microglobulin, α-microglobulin, retinol binding protein, micro albumin, kidney injury molecule-1, neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin, alkaline phosphatase, N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminase, γ-glutamyltransferase, and lactate dehydrogenase, etc. It is suggested that molecular epidemiology should be applied to long-term cohort studies, and molecular biological detection and analytic techniques should be combined with cohort data information to clarify the dose-effect relationship of biological indicators.