The role of lactate dehydrogenase in the diagnosis of acute renal infraction: a retrospective case-control study

Abstract Background: To evaluate the value of serum lactate dehydrogenase in the early diagnosis of acute renal infraction(ARI). Methods: We conducted a retrospective investigation in this study. A total of 63 ARI cases were recruited, and 219 cases which diagnosed with other acute abdominal diseases, including renal calculus, gall-stone and acute appendicitis, were also enrolled as controls. The clinical and laboratory data of those subjects were collected and analyzed. And the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to evaluate the value of laboratorial biomarkers in the classification of ARI. Results: There was no difference about the demographic characteristics and clinical symptoms between ARI cases and total controls except for a higher frequency of vomit in ARI group (25.4%) compared with the control group (13.2%).More ARI cases suffered with underling hypertension and cardiovascular diseases than controls. Laboratory data analysis identified abnormality of leukocytes and neutrophils counts, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, LDH, uric acid, estimated glomerular filtration, fibrinogen and D-dimer levels, among which LDH was found prominently related to the area of renal infarction (r=0.63, P=0.027). The area under the curve (AUC) of LDH reached 0.93 (SD: 0.07, P<0.001) in the classification of ARI, with an optimal sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 97%. Conclusions: Patients with ARI had a markedly higher LDH level compared with other acute abdomens. LDH might be an useful indicator in the differential diagnosis of ARI. Trial registration: No result of a health care intervention on human participants in the article.