Effect of duration of type I diabetes on the prevalence of stages of diabetic nephropathy defined by urinary albumin/creatinine ratio.

The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of stages of diabetic nephropathy, defined by the albumin/creatinine ratio (AC ratio) in repeated measurements in random urine samples. Over a 30-month interval, 1613 patients with Type I diabetes (IDDM) (aged 15 to 44 yr, IDDM duration 1 to 39 yr), and 218 healthy control subjects provided multiple urine specimens. AC ratios measured in urine samples taken 5 months apart were highly reproducible (Spearman r = 0.83). A criterion for the boundary between normoalbuminuria and microalbuminuria was obtained by searching for a cutpoint that optimized agreement between serial specimens on individuals. The result was lower in men than women: 17 as compared with 25 micrograms/mg. These two values corresponded to the 95th percentiles of the respective distributions of the AC ratio in healthy control subjects. Also these sex-specific cutpoints, when converted to albumin excretion rates, became almost equal: 30 and 31 micrograms/min. Microalbuminuria appeared early in the course of IDDM (6% of those with only 1 to 3 yr of diabetes) and then increased rapidly during two intervals, the first and third decades, before leveling off at 52%. By that time the cumulative risk of overt proteinuria had risen to 27%. Determinations of the AC ratio in random urine samples are easily obtained and are reliable indices of elevated urinary albumin excretion (microalbuminuria) in IDDM. The pattern of occurrence of microalbuminuria according to duration of IDDM suggests that there may be two subsets of diabetic nephropathy, one appearing early and the other late. Patients with microalbuminuria and 25 yr of postpubertal IDDM have low risk of progression to advanced diabetic nephropathy.