Urinary interleukin-8 is elevated in urinary tract infections independently of the causative germs

Interleukin-8 elevation in urine during urinary tract infections (UTIs) has been documented for different uropathogenic germs in 85 patients. We showed that for 17 different isolates, IL-8 was increased in 92% of UTIs with an average value of 627 pg/ml for infected, as compared to 45 pg/ml for uninfected patients. We suggest that the high negative predictive value of the IL-8 urine assay could be useful to eliminate UTIs in routine screenings.