Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Urinary tract infection is a common infectional disease in children and it is still located in the first row to causing chronic kidney disease in our country. The inflammatory cytokine interleukin interleukin-8 play an important role in response to bacterial infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of urine interleukin-8 level on diagnosis and localization of urinary tract infection.

METHODS

A total of 82 children aged 1 month to 15 years old with urinary tract infection and 49 healty children were included. The patients were divided into the acute pyelonephritis group (n = 39) and cystitis group (n = 43) according to the Jodal’s UTI criteria. Fever; C-reactive protein; white blood cells count; erythrocyte sedimentation rate and interleukin-8 were evaluated.

RESULTS

There was a significant difference between two study groups related with fever, C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate levels (p < 0.05). Significantly, higher initial urine interleukin-8 level were found in children with acute pyelonephritis (median 499 pg/ml) than in those with cystitis (252.1 pg/ml) (p < 0.001). And also, urine interleukin-8 in children were positively correlated with urine leucocyte counts (r=0.5, p<0.005).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

hese results indicate that urine interleukin-8 level is a useful diagnostic marker for early recognition of acute pyelonephritis in febrile children.