November 3, 2000
Complications
Question from Los Angeles, California, USA:
I am 22 years old and have had diabetes for 16 years. I have always had reasonably good glycemic control, although my blood sugars have been bouncing around a bit recently, and I am getting them under control). My last hemoglobin A1c was 6.1%. They have consistently been in the 5-6% range. I just took a 24 hour urine test and received a result of 4.2 mcg/min. I have read that one becomes a suspect for microalbuminuria at 7 mcg/min. Does the mcg/min test depend on the concentration of the urine? It seems that it would. Does this mean that there is a more accurate test? In your opinion, should I also get a urine albumin/creatinine ratio done?
Answer:
Congratulations on such good blood sugar control. Your question regarding measurements of microalbuminuria are good ones. A cutoff for an elevated value is 30 mg/24 hours or 30 mcg/mg creatinine on a random specimen. It sounds like you had a timed urine, which was measured in mcg/min. The cutoff for this unit set is 20 mcg/min. Your value of 4.2 is quite low and would be considered normal. Since there is some variation between individuals with this measurement, a second specimen at a later date would not be a bad idea. Remember to check with your physician.
JTL
