Akhtar Hussain Makhdoom, Khem A Karira, Mujtaba Farooq Rana.
Urinary Protein fractions in renal diseases.
Med Channel Jan ;10(3):31-4.

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of chronic renal disease is increasing worldwide as also in Pakistan. Overt proteinuria might not be merely a marker of glomerular dysfunction, since there is abundant experimental evidence that abnormal amounts of filtered protein have a role in progression of disease. OBJECTIVE: The present study proposes to define proteinuria in normal and different groups of renal disease and to establish the pattern of urinary protein fractions in these groups. METHODS: Fifty nine patients and twenty one control subjects were selected for the study. The subjects were evaluated for renal function assessment and their urinary protein fractions were estimated by electrophoresis. RESULTS: In renal disease cases total 24 hours urinary protein excretion was significantly high. Albumin. and gamma globulin were the major protein fractions excreted by renal disease patients. Albumin and alpha II excretion by nephrotic syndrome patients was significantly higher (p<0.01 and p<0.02 respectively) than chronic renal failure cases and beta globulin fraction of nephrotic cases was significantly high (p<0.01) as compared to diabetic nephropathy while it was significantly (p<0.01) high when compared to chronic renal failure cases. CONCLUSION: Nephrotic syndrome cause enough damage to the glomerular membrane allowing free filtration of proteins through it but the damaged tubules still retain a certain degree of selective reabsorption of different protein fractions. It highlights the need to investigate protein fractions in a larger sample of renal disease patients with improved methodology.

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