Urinary ferritin creatinine ratio, a potential biomarker for lupus nephritis activity

Introduction/objective Ferritin has gained increasing attention in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of urinary ferritin/creatinine ratio in lupus nephritis (LN). Method Samples from 62 SLE patients (35 with LN and 27 without LN) and 62 healthy controls were evaluated. There were nine patients who underwent renal biopsy. The amount of urinary ferritin was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and normalized by the amount of urinary creatinine to obtain the urinary ferritin/creatinine ratio (UFCR). The relationships between UFCR and inflammatory markers, laboratory indicators, as well as the activity index (AI), and chronicity index (CI) of KBs were also investigated by correlation analysis. Results UFCR level in severe active SLE patients was significantly higher than that in inactive SLE patients ( P