Novel Assessment of Urinary Albumin Excretion in Type 2 Diabetes Patients by Raman Spectroscopy.

. Urinary albumin excretion remains the key biomarker to detect renal complications in type 2 diabetes. As diabetes epidemy increases, particularly in low-income countries, efficient and low-cost methods to measure urinary albumin are needed. In this pilot study, we evaluated the performance of Raman spectroscopy in the assessment of urinary albumin in patients with type 2 diabetes. The spectral Raman analysis of albumin was performed using artificial urine, at five concentrations of albumin and 24 h collection urine samples from ten patients with Type 2 Diabetes. The spectra were obtained after removing the background fluorescence and fitting Gaussian curves to spectral regions containing features of such metabolites. In the samples from patients with type 2 diabetes, we identified the presence of albumin in the peaks of the spectrum located at 663.07, 993.43, 1021.43, 1235.28, 1429.91 and 1633.91 cm. In artificial urine, there was an increase in the intensity of the Raman signal at 1450 cm, which corresponds to the increment of the concentrations of albumin. The highest concentration of albumin was located at 1630 cm. The capability of Raman spectroscopy for detection of small concentrations of urinary albumin suggests the feasibility of this method for the screening of type 2 diabetes renal complications.