Hu et al. report that proteinuria could be used to identify burn injury patients who are at high risk of developing acute kidney injury (AKI). Their retrospective study evaluated data from 2,497 patients admitted to a burns unit over a 5-year period, 865 of whom had proteinuria. Among the 396 patients with a total burns surface area of >30%, 271 had proteinuria and 152 of those had AKI. No patients without proteinuria developed AKI. Mortality rates increased with increasing proteinuria levels and proteinuria was found to be a risk factor for AKI with an odds ratio of 4.48.