Use of random urinary protein-to-creatinine ratio for diagnosis of significant proteinuria during pregnancy

Abstract

Background: Sience the gold standard test used for making the diagnosis of significant proteinuria in 24-hours urine collection is cumbersome and time-consuming. It is necessity to substitute it with a rapid method. Methods and Materials: In this descriptive- analytic study 140 were selected for evaluation of pre-eclampsia in Zahedan Qods hospital in year 2003. A random urine samples was taken from each for the determination of protein-to-creatinine ratio and a 24-hour urine sample was sent to the laboratory as the gold standard method for the determination of clear proteinuria, the sensitivity, specificity and the positive and negative predictive value of the random protein-to-creatinine ratio was determined with a range of cut offs. The association between two methods was determined with Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: The correlation coefficient between the two methods was r=0.807, which showed high correlation of them. The data suggest that the best cutoff of ≥ 0.21 is a good predictor of significant proteinuria. This cutoff yields sensitivity, specificity and also the negative and positive predictive value of 100%. Conclusions: This study showed, the random urinary protein-to-creatinine ratio could replace the 24-hour urine collection as a simpler, faster, more useful method for the diagnosis of significant proteinuria.