Urinary kidney injury molecule-1 and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin as early biomarkers for predicting vancomycin-associated acute kidney injury: a prospective study

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies have demonstrated that urinary kidney injury molecule-1 (uKIM-1) and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL) were superior to serum creatinine (Scr) in detecting acute kidney injury (AKI), but their ability to predict clinical vancomycin-associated AKI has not been investigated. This study aimed to investigate the abilities of uKIM-1 and uNGAL individually and in combination to predict vancomycin-associated AKI. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Scr, uKIM-1, and uNGAL were measured on the day before and days 1, 2, and 3 of vancomycin therapy in a generalized adult population. Levels of these biomarkers between AKI and non-AKI groups were comparatively analyzed. Predictive performances were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis. RESULTS: A total of 87 patients were enrolled, and among them, 11 (12.6%) patients developed AKI. Urinary KIM-1 and NGAL levels in the AKI group were higher than in the non-AKI group at all time points (p < 0.05), and the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) were 0.849 (95% confidence interval (Cl] 0.750-0.948) for uKIM-1 and 0.824 (95% CI 0.726-0.922) for uNGAL, with cut-off values of 1.72 ng/mL and 9.07 ng/mL respectively. The AUC of uKIM-1 and uNGAL combined was 0.852 (95% Cl 0.754-0.949), and the sensitivity and specificity were 90.9% and 75.0%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Urinary KIM-1 and NGAL could efficiently discriminate patients with or without vancomycin-associated AKI earlier than Scr, and the combined urinary biomarkers showed fair discrimination compared with the individual biomarkers.