Urinary Calcium Excretion in City of Van in Healthy Children

Abstract

Objective: Spot urine calcium/creatinin ratio (UCa/Cr) is a simple, cheap and a reliable test that is commonly used to estimate calcium excretion in urine. Recent studies have shown that the UCa/Cr ratio depends on the age and the geographic area. The aim of our study is to evaluate urinal)/sodium/Creatinin (UNa/Cr), urinary potassium/Creatinin (UK/Cr) and urinary sodium/potassium (UNa/K) levels in children of age 0-16 years and to establish reference limits of hypercalciuria that can be used for UCa/Cr as a reference for healthy children in Van. Material and Method: 518 healthy children [247 (47.6%) girls and 271 (52.4%) boys], ageing 0-16 years living in the city of Van were included in the study. They were divided into 6 groups as in the follows: 0-.30 days 60 children, 31-90 days 54 children, 91 days-6 months 60 children, 7-18 months 101 children, 18 months-6 years 123 children and 7-16 years 120 children. There were no meaningful differences between gender. Results: Overall UCa/Cr rate and 95 percentile values are decreased with age and its being stabile after 18 months. Evaluating all children, the data showed a strong positive correlation between UCa/Cr and UNa/Cr, UNa/K (P<0.0001), and a strong negative correlation between UK/Cr and UNa/K (P<0.0001). It is determined that there is no correlation between UCa/Cr and UK/Cr for children under 18 months, but there is a negative correlation between UCa/Cr and UK/Cr for children over 18 months (P=0.036). Conclusion: The UCa/Cr ratio in this region was found higher than the values of the previous studies and it was shown that the UCa/Cr ratio had inverse relationship with age. This demonstrates the importance of our region geographically. Therefore UCa/Cr ratio of the reference values should be determined for each region.