Expression and clinical significance of NGAL/NGALR in lupus nephritis

Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of NGAL/NGALR in lupus nephritis (LN). Methods Eighty-four patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were selected in this study, and divided into LN group and non-LN group. The normal tissues adjacent to carcinoma of kidney were chosen as controls, resected during the operation in Department of Urology, the Central Hospital of Wuhan. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the NGAL/NGALR expression level in serum and urine of the patients with or without lupus nephritis. Immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression differences of NGAL/NGALR in lupus nephritis tissue and normal renal tissue. SLEDAI score was recorded by the SLEDAI-2000 scoring system (version 1985). SPSS 19.0 software was applied for data analysis, t test for two-group comparison, variance analysis for multi-group comparison, and spearman rank correlation analysis for correlation analysis. Results The expression levels of NGAL/NGALR in lupus nephritis patients were significantly higher than in those without lupus nephritis in both serum and urine. The expression levels of NGAL/NGALR increased significantly in lupus nephritis tissues. Conclusions NGAL and NGALR may be closely related to the occurrence/development and the activity of lupus nephritis, which can assist the clinical diagnosis, and may be expected to become the new targets for therapy of lupus nephritis.