Serum Lipase as Clinical Laboratory Index for Chronic Renal Failure Diagnosis.

BACKGROUND: Measuring the level of serum lipase has been used for the clinical diagnosis of acute pancreatitis. Reports showed that the serum lipase level increased in patients of clinical renal failure. In this study, we aimed to measure the change of serum lipase levels in chronic kidney diseases and determine whether it could serve as a clinical laboratory index for clinical renal failure diagnosis. Materials: The OLYMPUS AU5400 automatic biochemical analyzer was used to determine the serum levels of lipase and creatinine. The study included 120 cases in the clinical renal failure group, 76 cases in the nephrotic syndrome group, 81 cases in the chronic nephritis group, and 80 healthy controls from our hospital volunteers in the same period. We then compared the lipase levels and conducted statistical analyses among these groups.

RESULTS: The serum lipase levels were 15.3 U/L, 79.8 U/L, 45.1 U/L, and 51.0 U/L in the normal control, clinical renal failure, nephrotic syndrome, and chronic nephritis groups, respectively. The lipase levels in the groups with diseases were significantly different compared with that of the normal control group (p < 0.01). The lipase level of the clinical renal failure group was significantly higher than that of the nephrotic syndrome group and chronic nephritis group (p < 0.01). However, no statistically significant difference between the nephrotic syndrome and chronic nephritis group (p > 0.05) was observed. Moreover, an association of the serum lipase with disease progression was observed in the study.

CONCLUSIONS: Serum lipase is an effective serological index which can reflect the clinical changes in the clinical renal failure and tends to increase through the progression of renal dysfunction.