Abstract:

Aim: To evaluate the relationship between high sodium intake determined by spot urinary sodium excretion with metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and graft function in renal transplant (RT) recipients. Materials and methods: 152 RT recipients were enrolled. The demographic characteristics, office blood pressure (BP) values, height, weight, body mass index, waist and hip measurements, immunesuppressive drugs, other medications and biochemical parameters of the patients were recorded. Spot urinary sodium and spot urinary protein excretions were measured in the first morning urine in all the RT recipients. The patients were grouped as low sodium excretion (≤57) and high sodium excretion (≥58) based on the median value of 57 in spot urinary sodium. Results: In the low sodium group; creatinine values were found to be significantly lower (p<0.001) and eGFR was high in female patients (p=0.03). The mean protein in spot urine was found to be lower in women (p=0.03). In the high sodium group; BUN and creatinine levels were significantly higher in male patients than in female patients (p=0.04 and p=0.02, respectively). Ejection fraction was found to be significantly lower in male patients than in female patients (p=0.008). Spot urinary sodium excretion of patients with and without metabolic syndrome were compared and no difference was found between spot urinary sodium excretion values in both groups (p=0.99). Conclusion: Spot urinary sodium excretion can be seen as an inexpensive and relatively effective screening method that can be used to evaluate sodium intake in RT patients. It can be considered as a more valuable follow-up method especially in RT recipients with male gender, kidney dysfunction and high BP.