As mentioned in the MedicoInvestor Presentation NGAL for Dummies, Inflammation and cancer will often result in higher NGAL values, than what is present in normal healthy individuals. NGAL is not exclusively produced by the Kidneys, but also from whote blood cells, and other types of tissue.
This Chinese survey demonstrates that higher values than normal are seen in cancerpatients.
Other studies have shown that healthy individuals (the upper quartile) have NGAL values up to 146 ng/ml.
So what does that mean ? Well – for a start, if you use a cutoff of 150 ng/ml as suggested by Alere (and mentioned as a possible threshold by Abbott) – you will label a lot of false positive patients as AKI patients
The abovementiond study support this
In another interesting study NGAL has another mores sinister role to play…
