Urine dipstick for liver disease: a simple and very useful procedure

The relationship between hepatopathy and nephropathy is complex and little studied. This was a cross-sectional study including patients with chronic liver disease, with the exclusion of diabetics, hypertensives and those with systemic diseases or previously diagnosed kidney disease. Patients with positive proteinuria had albuminuria and creatininuria determined by dipstick, and patients with hematuria had an HLM (Red Blood Cell-Leukocyte-Minute) test. We included 75 patients with a mean age of 53.17 years and a M/F sex ratio of 1.34. Viral B hepatopathy was the main cause of hepatopathy (50.7%). Screening for renal impairment using the Multistix urine dipstick revealed proteinuria in 33 patients (44%), 25 of whom had pathological albuminuria on quantitative assay, i.e. a prevalence of 37.3%. Among our patients, 20% had a GFR < 90 ml/min/m2. In multivariate analysis, the predictive factors for pathological albuminuria were male sex, hypercholesterolemia and viral B liver disease.