How high can creatinine and bun levels go before death?

Creatinine is a by-product of muscular metabolism. In the natural and normal scheme of things, this substance or waste product can be eliminated from the body. A high-serum creatinine level may cause kidney damage. In relation to the above question as to how high can creatinine levels go before death, it must be noted that kidneys have strong compensatory ability and by that as long as its still 50 percent functional, creatinine level won't be that high. Which leads us to a conclusion that, the lesser the kidney function level is, the higher the creatinine level.

On the other hand for the blood urea nitrogen (BUN) is the most stable blood constituent following death as it reaches antemortem (before death) levels and even after moderate decomposition.

Therefore, as long as the kidneys are functional, regardless of other factors such as the patient's condition/ diagnosis, these blood constituents are nearly normal.

Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, controlling virtually every reaction within as well as providing structure and serving as signals to other cells. proteins are long chains of  amino acids  , and the exact sequence of the amino acids determines the final structure and function of the protein. instructions for that sequence are encoded in  genes  . to make a particular protein, a messenger ribonucleic acid (mrna) copy is made from the gene (in the process called  transcription  ), and the mrna is transported to the  ribosome  . protein synthesis, also called  translation  , begins when the two ribosomal subunits link onto the mrna. this step, called initiation, is followed by elongation, in which successive amino acids are added to the growing chain, brought in by transfer rnas (trnas). in this step, the ribosome reads the  nucleotides  of mrna three by three, in units called  codons  , and matches each to three nucleotides on the trna, called the anticodon. finally, during termination, the ribosome unbinds from the mrna, and the  amino acid  chain goes on to be processed and folded to make the final, functional protein