Clinical and metabolic characteristics of premature newborns with necrotizing enterocolitis

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most severe diseases in newborns in which the intestine is the target organ.
According to foreign authors, NEC occurs with a frequency of 2.4 per 1000 newborns, which is 2.1% among all children admitted to neonatology intensive care units; according to domestic authors, with a frequency of 4%.
There is an urgent need to identify new biomarkers suitable for early diagnosis of NEC, which would make it possible to choose the right treatment tactics at the onset of the disease.
Intestinal fatty acid binding protein (I-FABP) is a small cytoplasmic protein located in enterocytes involved in the uptake and transport of polar lipids, such as fatty acids, from the small intestinal lumen. I-FABP was investigated as a measure of enterocyte injury and a potential biomarker of NEC. Intestinal fatty acid binding protein (I-FABP) enters the bloodstream during enterocyte death. This protein constitutes up to 2% of the cytoplasmic protein content in mature enterocytes. Due to its small size (14-15 kDa), I-FABP can quickly pass through the kidney to urine, allowing it to be measured non-invasively in urine.