| Summary: | <b>: </b>Leptospirosis becomes severe, with a fatality rate of >10%, and manifests as severe lung injury accompanied by acute kidney injury. Using urine and blood samples of 112 patients with leptospirosis, osteopontin (OPN), galectin-9 (Gal-9) and other kidney-related biomarkers were measured to understand the pathological and diagnostic roles of OPN and Gal-9 in leptospirosis. Plasma levels of full-length (FL)-OPN (pFL-OPN) (<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.0001), pFL-Gal-9(<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.0001) and thrombin-cleaved OPN (<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.01) were significantly higher in patients with leptospirosis than in healthy controls (<i>n</i> = 30), as were levels of several indicators of renal toxicity: serum cystatin C (<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.0001), urine <i>N</i>-acetyl-β-glucosaminidase (NAG)/creatinine (<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.05), and urine clusterin/creatinine (<i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.05). pFL-Gal-9 levels were negatively correlated with pFL-OPN levels (<i>r</i> = −0.24, <i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.05). pFL-OPN levels were positively correlated with serum cystatin C (<i>r</i> = 0.41, <i>p</i> < 0.0001), urine NAG/creatinine (<i>r </i>= 0.35, <i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.001), urine clusterin/creatinine (<i>r</i> = 0.33, <i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.01), and urine cystatin C/creatinine (<i>r</i> = 0.33, <i>p</i><i> </i>< 0.05) levels. In a group of patients with abnormally high creatinine levels, significantly higher levels of serum cystatin C (<i>p</i> < 0.0001) and pFL-OPN (<i>p</i> < 0.001) were observed. Our results demonstrate that pFL-OPN reflect kidney injury among patients with leptospirosis.
|
|---|