Role of platelet to albumin ratio for predicting persistent acute kidney injury in patients admitted to the intensive care unit

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic role of platelet to albumin ratio (PAR) and in persistent acute kidney injury (pAKI) of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS: We involved pAKI patients from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV (MIMIC-IV) database and eICU Collaborative Research Database (eICU-CRD). Receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis was performed to evaluate the optimal cut-off PAR. RESULTS: A total of 7,646 patients were finally included in the present study. The optimal cut-off value of PAR was 7.2. The high-PAR group was associated with pAKI (hazard ratio [HR]: 3.25, 95% CI: 2.85–3.72, P < 0.001). We also performed this in the validation cohort, the results further confirmed that the high-PAR group was associated with pAKI (HR: 2.24, 95% CI: 1.86–2.71, P < 0.001). The PAR exhibited good pAKI predictive abilities in the original cohort (C-index: 0.726, 95%CI: 0.714–0.739) and in the validation cohort (C-index: 0.744, 95%CI:0.722–0.766) Moreover, as a systemic inflammatory indicator, PAR depicted better predictive ability compared to other systemic inflammatory indicators. CONCLUSION: The present study manifested that elevated PAR could predicts pAKI in patients admitted to ICU. PAR may be an easily obtained and useful biomarker to clinicians for the early identification of pAKI. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12871-023-02137-6.