AIM:The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical utility of neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin(NGAL)and other biomarkers in serum for patients with acute and chronic kidney injury.METHODS:A total of 171 patients with acute kidney injury(AKI)and 209 patients with chronic kidney disease(CKD)who sought medical care at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou between January 2022 and July 2023 were in-cluded in this study.Data on potassium(K),sodium(Na),chloride(Cl),carbon dioxide(CO2),urea(Urea),and glu-cose(GLU)were collected from each group of participants.A total of 94 individuals who were deemed healthy and had un-dergone physical examinations within the same time frame were chosen as the control group.The serum NGAL levels of all three groups were measured using latex immunoturbidimetry.The diagnostic effectiveness of serum NGAL and other bio-markers in identifying acute and chronic kidney injury was analyzed.Multiple logistic regression equations were employed to examine the factors influencing the occurrence of AKI and CKD in patients.Additionally,receiver operating characteris-tic(ROC)curves were constructed to evaluate the clinical significance of these biomarkers in patients with kidney injury.RESULTS:Through bioinformatic analysis,it was suggested that NGAL may be a detection marker of kidney injury.Ac-cording to general data,in the AKI and the CKD groups,K,Na,CO2,Urea,GLU and NGAL levels were higher than those in the healthy control group(P＜0.05).Multivariate logistic regression equation analysis showed that Na,Urea,GLU and NGAL levels were all independent risk factors for AKI or CKD disease occurrence(P＜0.05).The ROC curve analysis showed that in the AKI group,the area under the curve(AUC)for Na,Urea,GLU and NGAL were 0.711,0.960,0.793 and 0.841,respectively(P＜0.01).In the CKD group,the AUC for Na,Urea,GLU and NGAL were 0.681,0.990,0.703 and 0.930,respectively(P＜0.01).The sensitivity and specificity of NGAL and Urea combined diagnosis for AKI were 81.9%and 61.1%,respectively,and those for CKD were 62.7%and 80.0%,respectively.CONCLUSION:Serum NGAL can serve as an indicator of acute and chronic kidney injury,and its combination with other biomarkers also has certain clinical application value in acute and chronic kidney injury.