Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Microalbuminuria tends to appear in Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and reflecting underlying cardiovascular disease rather than diabetic nephropathy presented at diagnosis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of microalbuminuria and its possible relations with T2D, pre-diabetes and hypertension, in a representative sample (n=2860) of the adult population (>18 years old) of Galicia (NW Spain).

Material and methods: Subjects were selected through a two-step cluster sampling procedure from the Galician public health service database, which covers more than 95% of the population. The criteria recommended by the Expert Committee on the Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes Mellitus (2002) were used to establish the existence of T2D or pre-diabetes (presence of impaired fasting glucose (IFG), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or both). Chi-square and/or exact Fisher tests and odds ratio association measure were used for assessing the association of categorical covariates. Statistical significance was indicated by p<0.05.

Results: The overall prevalence of microalbuminuria in the adult Galician population, defined as persistent albumin excretion between 30–300 mg/day or 20–200 μg/min, was 4.7%, with significant differences by age (p<0.001), but without differences by gender (p=0.095).

14.9% of the diabetic subjects had microalbuminuria and it increased to 8.1% among hypertensive subjects. This prevalence increased with age, being higher in males than in females (10.2% versus 5.2%). Considering diabetes+hypertension, prevalence increased up to 19.4%. All of these pathologies showed a significant association with microalbuminuria (p<0.001 in all cases), Hypertension: OR=2.393 (1.672–3.426); Diabetes: OR=4.445 (2.914–6.781); Hypertension+Diabetes: OR=5.869 (3.663–9.403). However, there wasn’t association between pre-diabetes and microalbuminuria (p=0.423).

Conclusions: The prevalence of microalbuminuria in Galicia was 4.7%. Significant association was observed between microalbuminuria and T2D and HTA. No significant relation was observed with pre-diabetes, thus it’s very important to prevent the transition from pre-diabetes to T2D or to early detection/control of high blood pressure.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This work was supported, however funding details unavailable.