Prediction of acute kidney injury (AKI) and requirement for dialysis for COVID-19 patients
Wed Jan 20 2021
“Soluble Urokinase Receptor (SuPAR) in COVID-19–Related AKI“, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology
Patients infected with COVID-19 often develop AKI and many of those patients require dialysis.
In a recent paper, Azam et al investigated the link between a patient’s suPAR level and incidence of in-hospital AKI. It appeared that in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the suPAR-level at the time of admission was a strong predictor of developing in-hospital AKI and the need for dialysis. The higher the suPAR-level, the more severe the outcome.
The association between suPAR levels and incident in-hospital AKI was examined by measuring suPAR levels in plasma samples from 352 adult patients that had been collected within 48 hours of admission.
For patients admitted with a suPAR-level < 4.60 ng/ml, only a 6.0% incidence of AKI was found with no patients developing a need for dialysis1. For patients admitted with a suPAR level > 6.86 ng/ml, there was a 45.8% incidence of AKI with 16.1% of those patients requiring dialysis1.
The authors concluded that admission suPAR levels in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 are predictive of in-hospital AKI and the need for dialysis. SuPAR may be a key component of the pathophysiology of AKI in COVID-19.
This shows that suPAR can be used to ease the burden of AKI in COVID-19.
