Checking lactate dehydrogenase (LD) can be used to assist in the diagnosis of myocardial infarction, liver disease, and other acute and malignant diseases, etc., according to the range of its normal reference values [95-200 U/L (rate method, 30°C); 190-310 U/L (colorimetric method)].
1. Acute myocardial infarction (AMI): Increased serum LD activity and lack of tissue and organ specificity are of little clinical significance for early diagnosis in AMI. However, due to the long half-life of LD and the long recovery time after myocardial infarction, it is still of some significance for the diagnosis and condition monitoring and retrospective diagnosis of patients with late admission and subacute onset.
2. Liver disease: in acute hepatitis or active chronic hepatitis, LD is often significantly or moderately increased, and its sensitivity is slightly lower than that of ALT (alanine aminotransferase). In liver cancer, LD activity increases, especially in metastatic liver cancer, LD activity increases more obviously, up to 1000U/L or higher.
3. Other diseases: LD activity can be seen in the acute stage of various diseases, leukemia, malignant lymphoma, malignant tumor, hemolytic anemia, pernicious anemia, myotonic dystrophy, rhabdomyolysis, pancreatitis, pulmonary infarction, renal disease, cerebrovascular disease, heart failure, pericarditis and so on.
Therefore, this non-specific change in LD can be used to screen for the above diseases, and any unexplained increase in serum LD activity should be further examined to actively search for the cause.