Urine Tests for Kidney Health

During kidney damage, your kidneys start to leak protein from the blood. A urine test is usually recommended to the patients whose kidneys have got malfunctioned and leaking important nutrients through the urine.

There are many reasons why your body is losing protein off the blood and not all of which are related to the kidneys. But a urine test is usually recommended to the patients whose kidneys have got malfunctioned and leaking important nutrients through the urine. Hence, a urine test is actually done for two to three times, to know if the results are similar.

There are two types of urine tests that we ask the patients to go for:

• Dipstick urine test

A sample of the urine test tells if there is albumin present in your urine. Usually, doctors conduct a series of dipstick tests if the first tests show protein in your urine.

• Urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR)

After a positive dipstick test, another test is conducted to know how much albumin is present in your urine. Albumin is a type of protein that your body needs and it should be present in the blood, not urine. The medical term used to denote protein leak is called proteinuria or albuminuria. UACR defines the presence of albumin with respect to creatinine, a type of chemical waste in the urine. In a normal otherwise healthy person, UACR less than 30 mg/g is a sign of kidney damage.