Assessing the validity of adjusted urinary urea nitrogen as an estimate of total urinary nitrogen in three pediatric populations

Abstract

Nitrogen excretion is a useful measurement for determining efficiency of protein utilization. Knowledge of nitrogen losses is especially important in the treatment of stressed, postsurgical, or catabolic patients, in whom optimizing the amount of nitrogen intake in the diet may spare visceral and somatic proteins and encourage anabolism. Many methods have been used to estimate total urinary nitrogen (TUN) in different patient populations. Urinary urea nitrogen (UUN) values are routinely adjusted and used by investigators who are not able to measure TUN directly by either Kjeldahl or pyrochemoluminescent methods. The rationale for the use of adjusted UUN concentrations to predict TUN is based on adult experiences. No similar experience in pediatrics has been published. We have compared TUN with adjusted UUN in a study of 250 urine samples from pediatric patients (n = 34) and normal pediatric volunteers (n = 109). Our findings suggest that adjusted UUN (determined by previously established formulas) may be of limited use in estimating TUN in neonates, infants, and critically ill pediatric patients; however, adjusted UUN may be useful in approximating TUN in healthy school-aged children. Good correlations were found between UUN and TUN for critically ill children and postsurgical neonates and infants, suggesting that these newly described regression equations (once validated) may be useful in predicting TUN from a measured UUN.