الفهرس 
Systemic lupus eryth e matos u sOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Introduction: Lupus nephritis (LN) affects almost two-thirds of Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. Despite initial aggressive therapy, up to 25% of patients with LN will progress to end stage renal disease (ESRD). Conventional serum markers for LN lack the sensitivity of an ideal biomarker. Urinary Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (UNGAL) is an excellent biomarker for early diagnosis of acute kidney injury and predicting renal outcomes.
Objectives: To measure UNGAL among LN patients correlating its levels with renal disease activity to investigate its predictive performance in response to induction therapy.
Patients and Methods: 40 SLE patients with biopsy-proven LN, class III, IV, or V were randomly selected. The study was conducted in internal medicine department and Outpatient clinic in Ain Shams University Hospitals on and completed after six months. UNGAL was measured at baseline and after complete induction therapy.
Results: In LN patients at baseline; mean UNGAL levels of complete response, partial response, and no response groups were 14.48 ±2.99 ng/ml, 34.49 ±4.09, and 62.07 ±14.44 ng/ml respectively. Based on ROC curve, we found better performance of baseline UNGAL to discriminate complete response group from partial and non-response groups to predict response to induction, outperforming conventional biomarkers. The area under the curve was 0.943 (92.31% sensitivity, 88.89 % specificity), and the best cut-off level was 26.5 ng/ml. Conclusion: UNGAL performed better than conventional biomarkers in predicting response to treatment of active LN.