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Pre-eclampsia, a clinical syndrome of unknown etiology, is among the most common reasons for perinatal and maternal mortality (1). The incidence of pre-eclampsia in women with type 1 diabetes is considerably higher (10–20%) than in the background population (4–5%) (2). Microalbuminuria, defined as a urinary albumin excretion from 30 to 300 mg/24 h before or in early pregnancy has proven to be a good risk marker for pre-eclampsia in women with type 1 diabetes (3). However, the urinary albumin status is often not known at booking for pregnancy. The traditional method for diagnosing microalbuminuria, collection of 24-h urine samples, is cumbersome and time consuming and may be associated with collection errors and poor compliance. The aim of this study was to determine whether measurement of the albumin-to-creatinine ratio in random urine samples can replace 24-h urine collection in screening for micro- and macroalbuminuria in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes. The study was conducted at Copenhagen University Hospital from 2000 to 2003. All women with type 1 diabetes who were admitted to our obstetric department before 14 weeks of gestation were asked to participate, and 119 women were enrolled. The women were asked to make two 24-h urine collections and two random urine samples. The samples were collected between gestational weeks 7 and 22, since we previously have found the urinary albumin excretion …
Justesen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.