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Abstract: Background: Early acute kidney injury (AKI) diagnosis is difficult with traditional biomarkers (eg, creatinine). Novel injury biomarkers may diagnose AKI secondary to ureteral obstruction (UO) earlier, before irreversible damage develops. Serum Galectin-3 (sGal-3), a potential novel biomarker, is a protein present in kidney tubules shown to increase in rats with UO.
Hypothesis/Objectives: To compare sGal-3 in healthy cats and cats with UO.
Animals: Fifteen healthy control cats and twenty-two cats with UO. For control cats, creatinine and SDMA were within reference intervals and ultrasound showed minimal to no renal changes.
Methods: Serum was collected in all cats. A feline specific sGal-3 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine sGal-3 concentrations. Samples were performed in duplicate, and data included if the coefficient of variation between samples was < 20%. Shapiro–Wilk testing was used to evaluate for normality and parametric statistics were performed. P < 0.05 was considered significant.
Results: Mean serum Gal-3 was lower in healthy cats (274.3 pg/ml [± 146.5 SD]) compared to cats with UO (707.7 pg/ml [± 223.3 SD]) (P< 0.0001). There was no difference in sGal-3 concentrations between cats with unilateral or bilateral UO (P=0.2) and no correlation between Gal-3 and body weight or age. With a cut-off of 500pg/ml, sGal-3 had a sensitivity of 86% and specificity of 100% for UO diagnosis.
Conclusions and clinical importance: Given the high morbidity and mortality of UO in cats, early diagnosis is critical. Gal-3 may be a potential biomarker for diagnosis of UO or other AKI causes in cats.
