2023, Vol. 5, Issue 1, Part B

Background and Aim: Sepsis is a serious medical condition characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state and the presence of a known or suspected infection that has severe consequences. This study was conducted to bring out the correlation between hyperuricemia in clinically diagnosed sepsis patients and morbidity and mortality and also to find out the correlation between hyperuricemia in sepsis patients and acute kidney injury and ARDS in medical intensive care patients.

Material and Methods: The present study is the cohort study analysis; performed on the patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit in the medical college and associated hospital. We defined hyperuricemia as a uric acid level ≥7mg/dL in both males and females. We defined Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) as an absolute ≥0.3mg/dL increase in serum creatinine over a 48-hour time period from the baseline creatinine based on the Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) definition. We used as the baseline creatinine value the patients’ creatinine value at the time of initial presentation to the MICU.

Results: Among 150 study participants included in the study, 64 had elevated uric acid levels which constitutes about 43.8%, whereas 86 patients constituting 58.4% had normal uric acid levels. AKI was significantly higher in the hyperuricemia group. 77% of the septic patients with hyperuricemia developed AKI. The percentage of septic patients with normal uric acid levels developing AKI was 34.7%. Also, among the patients who developed AKI, 59.8% had hyperuricemia and 43.6% had normal uric acid levels. Similarly, 42.8% of patients with hyperuricemia developed ARDS whereas it was only 27.71% in the normal uric acid levels group.

Conclusion: Serum Uric acid may be potentially used as a marker of severity of illness as well as predictor of mortality and morbidity in patients with clinically diagnosed sepsis in the IMCU. This study recommends further studies on a large basis to confirm the observations.