Utility of Urinary Biomarkers for Diagnosis of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in COVID-19

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a complication of COVID-19 and urinary biomarkers of renal “stress” and “injury” can be utilised for an early diagnosis. In this prospective observational study, critically-ill adult patients with COVID-19 disease from November 2020 to May 2021 were recruited and urine samples collected at the time of admission to ICU, and subsequently at 12, 24 and 48 h and analysed for biomarkers of “renal injury” namely KIM-1, NGAL, IL-18, and cell cycle arrest biomarker IGFBP-7 and TIMP-2 which have been reported to increase following renal stress. Spot urine samples were collected and to adjust for dilution, sample volume and rate of urine production, assays of the biomarkers were normalised by dividing the values with urinary creatinine concentration. The incidence of AKI in our study was 22.64