• Alexandre Braga Libório, Klébia Magalhães Pereira Castello Branco, and Candice Torres de Melo Bezerra.
• Public Health Postgraduate Program, Universidade de Fortaleza, UNIFOR, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil ; Internal Medicine Department, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Avenida Abolição No. 4043, Ap. 1203 Edifício Jangada, Mucuripe, 60165-082 Fortaleza, CE, Brazil.
• Biomed Res Int. 2014 Jan 1; 2014: 601568.

AbstractIn the past 10 years, great effort has been made to define and classify a common syndrome previously known as acute renal failure and now renamed "acute kidney injury (AKI)." Initially suggested and validated in adult populations, AKI classification was adapted to the pediatric population and recently has been modified for the neonatal population. Several studies have been performed in adults and older children using this consensus definition, leading to improvement in the knowledge of AKI incidence and epidemiology. In spite of these advances, the peculiar renal pathophysiology of critically ill newborn patients makes it difficult to interpret urine output (UO) and serum creatinine (SCr) levels in these patients to diagnose AKI. Also, new urine biomarkers have emerged as a possible alternative to diagnose early AKI in the neonatal population. In this review, we describe recent advances in neonatal AKI epidemiology, discuss difficulties in diagnosing AKI in newborns, and show recent advances in new AKI biomarkers and possible long-term consequences after AKI episode.

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