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Clinical Pathology Laboratory - Available Test
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Urine Uric Acid
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| This is used to detect excessive urate excretion in breeds, such
as dalmations, and to monitor response to therapy with allopurinol.
Dalmations excrete up to 400 to 600 mg uric acid per day in their
urine, compared to non-Dalmation dogs, which excrete less than 100
mg uric acid per day in urine.
The best method for measuring urinary urate excretion is from a
24-hour urine collection, as recent studies have shown that a single
urine uric acid to creatinine ratio does not correlate well to 24-hour
urinary uric acid excretion. In addition, the amount of uric acid
excreted in urine is dependent on diet (higher on meat-based diets).
However, measurement of 24-hour excretion of uric acid in the urine
is cumbersome and impractical and most people use urine uric acid
to creatinine ratios for monitoring therapy. Guidelines in the literature
for uric acid/creatinine ratios in urine are shown below:
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Breed
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uric acid/creatinine
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non-Dalmation
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0.2 to 0.4
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Dalmation
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0.6 to 1.5
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Dalmation on allopurinol therapy
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50% reduction (i.e. 0.25 to 0.3 in most
dogs)
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| Care must be taken when submitting urine samples for measurement
of uric acid. Uric acid precipitates rapidly when urine is cooled,
so the sample must be resuspended and a well-mixed aliquot provided
to the laboratory, to prevent falsely decreased values due to precipitation
(ideally, the urine should be submitted in the original container
it was collected into). |
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