Urinary Calprotectin and the Distinction between Prerenal and Intrinsic Acute Kidney Injury

Background and objectives To date there is no reliable marker for the differentiation of prerenal and intrinsic acute kidney injury (AKI). We investigated whether urinary calprotectin, a mediator protein of the innate immune system, may serve as a diagnostic marker in AKI. Design, setting, participants, & measurements This was a cross-sectional study with 101 subjects including 86 patients with AKI (34 prerenal, 52 intrinsic including 23 patients with urinary tract infection) and 15 healthy controls. Assessment of urinary calprotectin concentration was by ELISA and immunohistochemistry of kidney biopsy specimens using a calprotectin antibody. Inclusion criteria were: admission to hospital for AKI stage 1 to 3 (Acute Kidney Injury Network); exclusion criteria were: prior renal transplantation and obstructive uropathy. Results Median urinary calprotectin was 60.7 times higher in intrinsic AKI (1692 ng/ml) than in prerenal AM (28 ng/ml, p <0.01). Urinary calprotectin in prerenal disease was not significantly different from healthy controls (45 ng/ml, p = 0.25). Receiver operating curve curve analysis revealed a high accuracy of calprotectin (area under the curve, 0.97) in predicting intrinsic AM. A cutoff level of 300 ng/ml provided a sensitivity of 92.3% and a specificity of 97.1%. Calculating urinary calprotectin/creatinine ratios did not lead to a further increase of accuracy. Immunostainings of kidney biopsies were positive for calprotectin in intrinsic AM and negative in prerenal AKI. Conclusions Accuracy of urinary calprotectin in the differential diagnosis of AKI is high. Whereas calprotectin levels in prerenal disease are comparable with healthy controls, intrinsic AM leads to highly increased calprotectin concentrations. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 6: 2347-2355, 2011. doi: 10.2215/CJN.02490311