• Niklas Jonsson, Patrik Gille-Johnson, Claes-Roland Martling, Shengyuan Xu, Per Venge, and Johan Mårtensson.
• Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden. Electronic address: niklas.jonsson@sll.se.
• J Crit Care. 2019 Oct 1; 53: 264-270.

PurposeTo assess the value of dimeric neutrophil-gelatinase associated lipocalin (NGAL) as an early marker of bacterial infection and its response to antibiotic therapy in intensive care unit (ICU) patients.Materials & MethodsWe measured daily plasma dNGAL in 198 patients admitted to a mixed ICU. Likelihood of infection was determined with International Sepsis Forum criteria. We measured dNGAL in 145 healthy controls to establish normal values.ResultsICU patients had higher dNGAL than healthy controls. A suspected or confirmed infection was independently associated with 90% (95% CI 15-215%) higher dNGAL than absence of infection. We observed no association between acute kidney injury and dNGAL. Diagnostic accuracy at antibiotic treatment initiation, assessed with area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve (AUC-ROC), for dNGAL was 0.70 (95% CI 0.60-0.79). AUC-ROC for dNGAL 24 h before antibiotic treatment initiation was 0.54 (95% CI 0.41-0.66). The mean (95% CI) change of dNGAL in the first 2 days after appropriate antibiotic therapy initiation was -31 (-49,-13)%.ConclusionsIn our cohort of ICU patients, plasma dNGAL was associated with presence of bacterial infections independent of AKI but it performed poor as a predictor of infections. Following antibiotic therapy, dNGAL markedly decreased-supporting further exploration of dNGAL-guided antibiotic de-escalation.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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