Why should I should I have my urine checked if I have diabetes?

Why should I should I have my urine checked if I have diabetes?

Anne Peters, MD, FACP, CDE (Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Programs, USC Keck School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What are the symptoms of type 2 diabetes?; When should I get emergency care if I have diabetes?; Why should I should I have my urine checked if I have diabetes? and more...

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure in the United States, but it's a preventable problem, like most of the problems associated with diabetes. And one of the important things about preventing diabetic kidney damage is knowing that there's any damage. And so there's a very early test called a urine albumin creatinine ratio, it's a very little early test to tell us if there's any leakage of protein at all from the kidneys caused by diabetic kidney damage. It tells us if there's even early damage caused by the diabetes. And if there's early damage caused by the diabetes, we can give certain medications to help prevent that early damage from progressing to kidney failure. So every year, people with diabetes, whether type 1 or type 2, need to get a urine test. It's not a 24-hour urine, it's just a urine sample. And you need to ask the doctor to test for diabetic kidney damage. So it's a slightly special test that's not the routine test done on someone without diabetes, and it's one that many doctors don't do. But it's very important to do yearly to be sure that diabetic kidney damage isn't happening, because we have treatments to help if it develops.