
Urine test for diabetes: What you need to know
Urine tests can check for a range of things, including blood in the urine, infection, and other systemic conditions. They are frequently used for diagnosing and monitoring diabetes.
In this article, we look at types of urine tests for diabetes and how to understand the results.
Contents of this article:
What is a urine test for diabetes?
Urine tests are important for both the diagnosis and monitoring of diabetes. Urine testing is less accurate than blood testing but is useful as a screening test for people who already know they have diabetes.
Urine tests can also be used to check for glucose in the urine of people who are undiagnosed.
A urine test will be looking for three things: glucose, ketones, and protein.
Glucose
Having glucose in the urine may indicate diabetes, although it can also be caused by other conditions. For example, pregnant women who do not have diabetes may have glucose in their urine.
Glucose is not normally found in urine, but it can pass from the kidneys into the urine in people who have diabetes.
Ketones
Ketone is a chemical that the body produces when there is a shortage of insulin in the blood. It is a by-product produced when the body starts to break down body fat for energy.
The presence of ketones in a person with diabetes may indicate a high blood glucose level, usually because a person with diabetes cannot use glucose as energy and has to use fat instead. Ketones in the blood can then spill into the urine.
Ketones in the urine are more common in people who have type 1 diabetes but can occur in those with type 2 diabetes as well.
Protein
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