Prevalence of hematuria and proteinuria in healthy 4 to 6 year old children in daycare centers of Rasht (Northern Iran).

Objective: Screening of kidney diseases by urinalysis in preschool children was approved in many parts of the world with inexpensive tools such as urinary dipsticks. In this study the researchers investigate the prevalence of hematuria and proteniuria in 4 to 6-year-old children in daycare centers of Rasht (Iran). Methods: The researchers examined proteinuria and hematuria in 1520 healthy children in daycare centers of Rasht. Urine strips were employed to examine the urine which was already collected from the subjects. Another urine sample was collected from those children with abnormal findings in the first samples with dipstick of the same brand a month later. If any positive result was found again, the urine was analyzed with dipstick and microscope concurrently. Findings: In the first dipstick samples, the prevalence was 3.2% for hematuria, 5.8% for proteinuria, and 0.13% for a mixture of proteinuria and hematuria. In the second urinalysis in patients with positive findings, hematuria, proteinuria as well as mixed proteinuria and hematuria were 20.4%, 52.0%, and 2.0% correspondingly. In the third analysis of samples, the abnormal findings in all patients were 13 (0.85%) isolated hematuria, 24 (1.57%) isolated proteinuria and one (0.06 %) mixed hematuria and proteiuria. Conclusion: This study showed that the prevalence of proteinuria and hematuria during pre-school period (4 to 6 year-olds) may reveal relatively similar frequencies of some other studies.