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

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.