Elevated Serum Uric Acid/Albumin Ratio as a Predictor of Post-Contrast Acute Kidney Injury After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Patients with ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction

BACKGROUND: The serum uric acid/albumin ratio (sUAR), a novel inflammatory marker, effectively predicts acute kidney injury (AKI) and cardiovascular outcomes. However, whether the sUAR predicts post-contrast acute kidney injury (PC-AKI) in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) remains uncertain. In this study, we evaluated the association between the sUAR and PC-AKI in patients with STEMI undergoing PCI. METHODS: We consecutively recruited patients with STEMI who underwent PCI and stratified them into three groups according to the terciles of the sUAR. The primary outcome was the incidence of PC-AKI. The association between the sUAR and PC-AKI was assessed by multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: A total of 2861 patients with STEMI were included in this study. The incidence of PC-AKI increased stepwise with increasing sUAR tercile (2.6% vs 4.0% vs 11.6%, p < 0.001), and the incidence of in-hospital major adverse clinical events (MACEs) was highest among patients in the Q3 group. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the sUAR was also an independent predictor of PC-AKI (continuous sUAR, per 1-unit increase, odds ratio [OR] [95% confidence interval (CI)]: 1.06 [1.02–1.10], p = 0.005; tercile of sUAR, OR [95% CI] for Q2 and Q3: 1.18 [0.69–2.01] and 1.85 [1.12–3.06], respectively, with Q1 as a reference) but not in-hospital MACEs. In the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the area under the curve (AUC) of the sUAR for predicting PC-AKI was 0.708 (95% CI: 0.666–0.751), and ROC analysis also showed that the sUAR was superior to uric acid and albumin alone in predicting PC-AKI. CONCLUSION: Increasing sUAR was significantly associated with a higher risk of PC-AKI but not in-hospital MACEs in patients with STEMI who underwent PCI, suggesting that sUAR had a predictive value for PC-AKI after PCI in patients with STEMI. Further studies are required to confirm this finding.