Lise Skovgaard Svingel, who defended her PhD thesis today, has conducted four studies on acute pyelonephritis, which is a severe manifestation of urinary tract infection. Besides investigating the temporal changes in the occurrence and microbiological diagnostics of acute pyelonephritis (APN), Lise also looked at whether APN leads to an increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD).

In study I, Lise and colleagues found that the rate of hospitalizations for APN almost doubled from 2000 to 2018, while they in study II showed that microbiological testing was increasingly integrated in the diagnostic workup in patients with hospital-diagnosed APN in the same period.

When examining the association between APN and the risk of CKD in study III, the researchers found that a first-time hospitalization for APN was associated with a slightly increased risk of CKD. In the last study, Lise et al. found that patients who had both APN and acute kidney injury (AKI) had a long-term increased risk of CKD, despite a documented recovery from AKI.