Proteinuria in Children

Proteins help our body to carry food, hormones and medicine through blood to all parts of the body and to keep water inside blood vessels. Kidneys filter the blood for waste products, excess fluid and salts and pass them out as urine and stools. However, normally, kidneys don't filter out proteins as most of them are too big to pass through the kidneys and thus, our urine has no proteins. In case of Proteinuria, proteins creep into the child's urine, which indicates malfunctioning of kidneys, mainly due to the swelling or inflammation, infection or damage in kidneys due to toxic chemicals.

Proteinuria can be of two types:

• Orthostatic proteinuria, which is harmless and lets only a little protein in the urine.
• Other form of Proteinuria, in which a lot of protein is found in child's urine, is more serious and is indicative of serious kidney disease.

This medical condition doesn't hurt but may cause the level of protein in the blood to go down causing swelling in child's eyelids, ankles and legs and high blood pressure. Proteinuria is diagnosed by dipping a special strip of paper into a 24-hour sample of child's urine to show whether it contains proteins. Some blood tests may also be needed. To collect the 24-hour urine sample of the child, you can follow these tips:

• You will need to take the children who are still not potty-trained to the hospital to get the collection done.
• For potty-trained child, let the child pass the first urine in the toilet, as it is not needed but note the time of urination.
• Then, throughout the day, make the child urinated in the special container given by the doctor or the laboratory.
• For girls, collect the urine first in urine 'hat' and then pour it into the special container.
• Keep the child urine in the refrigerator until you hand it to the lab and between the collections, so that there are no bacterial infections in the sample.
• Next morning, take the first urine in the container and thus, sample collection is completed.
• Be sure to wash your hands after handling the container.
• Write the date and the time on the container label and give it to the lab.