Evaluation of Urinary Interleukin-18 Changes in Patients Treated with Vancomycin

Vancomycin, used to treat severe gram-positive infections, can induce acute kidney injury. Some evidence introduced Interleukin-18 (IL-18) as an inflammatory mediator of ischemic damage to many organs and urinary IL-18 as a diagnostic biomarker of acute tubular necrosis. The current study aimed to evaluate the urinary level of IL-18 after vancomycin therapy. This cross-sectional study was conducted on patients under treatment with vancomycin selected from those referred to Dr. Sheikh Hospital, Mashhad, Iran, from 2018-2019. Urinary IL-18 was measured based on nanograms per milliliter using a human IL-18 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit about this cytokine before vancomycin administration and then two days later. All the analyses were performed in SPSS software (version 25), and a P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. A total of 36 patients with a mean age of 40.06±36.67 months were included in the study. The mean scores of IL-18 before and after taking vancomycin were 1453.00±555.01 and 1713.00±660.98, respectively. The IL-18 was significantly lower before vancomycin consumption than the level reported after 48 h (P<0.05). The present study highlighted a higher level of urinary IL-18 after vancomycin treatment, which may indicate kidney injuries. Therefore, it may be considered a potential biomarker of acute tubular necrosis in patients under vancomycin therapy.