Introduction: Urine extracellular vesicles (uEVs) are a heterogeneous group of bi-lipid encapsulated vesicles with a majority of them originating from kidney.These kidney-derived uEVs display distinct protein markers reflective of nephron segment-of-origin, along with injury-associated proteins, offering an insight into the pathological state of its source cell.The most common methods of analysing protein expression on uEVs are western blot, mass spectrometry, and flow cytometry.The key strength of flow cytometric analysis of EVs include its capacity for high-throughput single and bulk EV analysis.Various studies have evaluated kidney markers on uEVs using a range of flow cytometers.Methods: This study systematically analysed single and bead-based flow cytometric approaches to assessing nephron segment markers on uEVs.Articles published between 1 January, 2000 and 31 August, 2025 reporting flow cytometric analysis of human uEVs were searched in PubMed.Studied uEV markers were mapped to nephron segments using single cell RNA sequencing data from the Kidney Precision Medicine Project.Participant characteristics, cohort size, urine collection methods, and uEV isolation techniques for each study were also summarised.Results: A total of 48 protein markers were reported from 26 journal articles with 5 podocyte-derived uEV markers (NPHS1, NPHS2, PODXL, PDPN, TIMP2), 11 proximal tubule-derived uEV markers WCN26-3606
Silva et al. (Wed,) studied this question.