• Antonio Lacquaniti, Massimiliano Giardina, Silvia Lucisano, Roberto Messina, Antoine Buemi, Claudia D Risitano, Valeria Chirico, Michele Buemi, and Antonio David.
• Section of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Messina, Via Salita Villa Contino, 30, 98100 Messina, Italy. buemim@unime.it.
• Curr Vasc Pharmacol. 2013 Nov 1;11(6):1001-10.

BackgroundAcute kidney injury (AKI) develops in 10% of patients after surgical abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair. Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is a predictor of AKI and Endothelial Progenitor Cells (EPCs) represent a potential repair mechanism for vascular lesions. We evaluated the diagnostic power of serum (s) and urine (u) NGAL in detecting a possible event of AKI in patients undergoing surgical treatment for AAA repair. We also investigated the influence of vascular injury on EPCs.MethodsWe examined 50 patients who underwent open AAA repair. Blood and urine was collected preoperatively and every hour after surgery until 8 h to quantify sNGAL, uNGAL and circulating EPCs. AKI, was defined as a ≥25% decrease in eGFR compared with baseline values.ResultsThere was an inverse correlation between eGFR, sNGAL and uNGAL, while a direct correlation between sNGAL APACHE II Score and EPCs was found. At receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, sNGAL and uNGAL showed a very good diagnostic profile. Kaplan Meier curves showed that NGAL is a highly sensitive predictor of incidence of AKI. Univariate followed by multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis showed that uNGAL and sNGAL predicted AKI independently of other potential confounders, including eGFR and APACHE II Score. Patients had at baseline and after surgical stress a significantly higher number of EPCs than control group.ConclusionsNGAL represents an independent renal predictor of incidence of AKI. EPCs reflect the degree of vascular damage and could be considered as an indicator of disease with a reparative-regenerative vascular-endothelial function.

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