Serum creatinine is a better indicator of overall renal function and progression to renal failure.
Serum creatinine levels are less affected than urea levels by age, dehydration, and catabolic states, e.g. fever, sepsis, and internal bleeding as compared to UREA
Creatinine levels are also less influenced by changes in diet such as low intake of protein (providing this is not prolonged).
Increasingly the measurement of serum creatinine is being used to investigate HIV associated renal disease and to monitor patients being treated
with nephrotoxic antiretroviral drugs, e.g. tenofovir.
What are normal Ranges?
Males: 60–130 mol/l 0.7 to 1.4 mg/100 ml
Females: 40–110 mol/l 0.4 to 1.2 mg/100 ml
Lower in children depending on
muscle mass.
What does results indicate?
Increase in serum creatinine levels is associated with diseases that cause renal failure:
Diseases that can cause renal failure with a reduced GFR include glomerulonephritis (inflammation of the kidney glomeruli), pyelonephritis (inflammation of the pelvis of the kidney), and renal tuberculosis.
Diseases causing obstruction of urine outflow may also lead to kidney failure, e.g. urethral structures, prostatic enlargement, cancer of the bladder, and urinary schistosomiasis.
Acute renal failure is often due to sudden
reduced blood flow to the kidney occurring in haemorrhage, obstetrical and surgical emergencies, malaria, and septicaemia.
Non-renal causes of increased plasma creatinine levels include strenuous exercise and the effect of drugs such as salicylates.
Falsely high serum/plasma
creatinine levels can be due to large amounts of acetoacetate in specimens from patients with diabetic ketoacidosis. Other substances that can cause analytical interference resulting in raised creatinine
levels include ascorbic acid and cephalosporin antibiotics.
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