The European Kidney Function Consortium (EKFC) equation surpasses existing equations by “resulting in generally lower bias across the spectrum of age and kidney function,” its developers wrote in an article published online Nov. 9 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
“The new EKFC equation may have helpful properties and perform better in estimating GFR, compared with the current KDIGO [Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes]-recommended equations,” they added.
The primary KDIGO-recommended equation in its most recent guideline was the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation, designed for adults, and a companion equation, the CKiD, covers children and adolescents.
“Key in our [new] equation is the adjustment for differences in serum creatinine generation between children and adults, or between men and women,” lead author Hans Pottel, PhD, KU Leuven (Belgium), said in an interview.
In an accompanying editorial, Andrew M. Levey, MD, and associates wrote: “We agree that a single eGFR equation that can be used in children and adults and performs well in the transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a worthy goal.”
“But the claim of equivalent or superior performance, compared with the CKD-EPI equation is not conclusive,” claimed Dr. Levey, who led the research team that developed the CKD-EPI equation, and coauthors.
Dr. Levey is professor of medicine at Tufts University, Boston.
What’s new is Q
Dr. Pottel and codevelopers devised what they call Q values: age- and sex-dependent median creatinine levels in normal individuals.
Q values act to “normalize or rescale creatinine before entering it into the equation, because we know that creatinine generation is different” based on factors that include age, sex, and muscle mass.
The EKFC equation extends the CKD-EPI equation and first eGFR equation by using Q values and applying across age ranges, like the full-age spectrum (FAS) equation, first reported in 2016 by a team led by Dr. Pottel.
“Although the FAS equation was designed to overcome the challenge in measuring GFR in patients transitioning from adolescence to adult nephrology care, it also underestimates GFR at low serum creatinine values and in patients with chronic kidney disease,” wrote Dr. Pottel and coauthors.
Hence, their intent to tweak the FAS equation to overcome this limitation and create the EKFC equation.
“The new equation combines the strengths of the CKD-EPI and FAS equations,” they woite.
However, “we acknowledge that lack of precision is still a major problem with all eGFR equations,” including the new EKFC, they added.
Editorialists dispute better performance of EKFC over CKD-EPI
In their editorial, Dr. Levey and coauthors noted the EKFC equations and other adapted equations in development “represent a conceptual advance over the FAS equations,” but they dispute the claims of better performance, compared with the CKD-EPI.
“We compared the performance of the EKFC and CKD-EPI equations in a different, large external validation population of Black and non-Black adults,” the external population used to validate the CKD-EPI equation, the editorialists reported.
The upshot was “our results did not confirm the author’s conclusions” about the EKFC equation.
In response, Dr. Pottel highlighted that the EKFC equation is currently not designed for use in Black patients.
“With its derivation and validation now reported in the new article, the EKFC equation is fully validated and ready for routine use in Whites,” he said. “We plan to evaluate and possibly fine tune our equation for its application in other ethnicities.”
Regarding the inferior performance, compared with the CKD-EPI equation in the non-Black population tested by the editorialists, Dr. Pottel cited “calibration issues for serum creatinine” that some experts have found in the datasets compiled by developers of the CKI-EPI equation that could limit the utility of these data.