Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 2|pp 2885—2894

Serum response factor, a novel early diagnostic biomarker of acute kidney injury

Long Zhao¹, Chenyu Li¹, Chen Guan¹, Ning Song², Hong Luan¹, Congjuan Luo¹, Wei Jiang¹, Quandong Bu¹, Yanfei Wang¹, Lin Che¹, Yan Xu¹

¹Department of Nephrology, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao 266003, China
²Department of Obstetrics, Weifang People’s Hospital, Weifang 261041, China

* Equal contribution

Received: June 15, 2020Accepted: October 31, 2020Published: January 5, 2021

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202381

Copyright: © 2021 Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Objective: Studies have shown that serum response factor (SRF) is increased in chronic kidney injury, such as diabetic nephropathy, hyperuricemic nephropathy and renal cell carcinoma. The objective is to explore the early diagnostic value of SRF in acute kidney injury (AKI).

Methods: AKI-related microarray data were analyzed, and the expression and location of SRF were investigated in the early phase of AKI.

Results: Bioinformatics results demonstrated that SRF was dramatically elevated 2-4 h after ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) in mouse renal tissue. In I/R rats, SRF was mostly expressed and located in renal tubular epithelial cells (TECs). SRF started to increase at 1 h, peaked at 3-9 h and started to decrease at 12 h after I/R. The areas under the ROC curve of renal SRF mRNA, renal SRF protein, urinary SRF, serum SRF and serum creatinine (Scr) were 87.9%, 83.0%, 81.3%, 78.8%, 68.8%, respectively.

Conclusion: SRF is remarkably upregulated in early (before 24 h) AKI and can replace Scr as a potential new early diagnostic biomarker of AKI.