LCN2 and chronic kidney disease: NGAL has been described as an early marker of kidney disease, since it is increased in urine during AKI before serum creatinine level elevation (Mori and Nakao, 2007; Devarajan, 2008; Parikh and Devarajan, 2008), and it is also increased in populations at high risk of CKD before other evidence of CKD develops (Ramírez-Rubio et al., 2016).