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What Causes Rise In Urea Level In Infants?
My kid 1 month was in hospital for the last 15 days after she was admitted to due excess dehydration. Later found blood urea as 145. After giving fluid dextrose 10%, it came down to 77, 30 etc. After removing her from ventilator support, she is started feeding breast milk and after 4 days again Urea shoot to 60. Once the fluid is given, the urea level comes down very fast. Otherwise she is sucking breast milk without any issue. This repeated twice in the hospital - like increasing of blood urea. Kidney scanning & tests are done, but could not find any issues. We noticed that whenever the urea is starting to increase, the kid will not urinate and also heavy vomiting occurs. What could be the reason? Please answer in layman s language. Thanks.
Mon, 27 Apr 2020
Hi,
Urea is a waste product formed after protein digestion in our body. This is usually removed by kidney.
For kidneys to function normally, good blood flow is must. When blood flow decreases because of dehydration(>90% of our blood is water), as occurs in diarrhea, vomiting, low fluid intake- blood flow decreases, leading to decreased kidney function and hence high urea level.
If serum creatinine(another test for kidney function) is nearly normal and urea decreases after giving fluids, this indicates that kidneys are normal as such but the main problem is dehydration.
In short, here we need not worry about kidneys, but have to look for causes of recurrent dehydration.
This can happen in frequent vomiting or vomiting, improperly prepared formula feed and rarely some metabolic disorders. From given details, it is difficult to comment on the cause here.
Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further.
Take care
Regards,
Dr. Muhammed Aslam TK
Urea is a waste product formed after protein digestion in our body. This is usually removed by kidney.
For kidneys to function normally, good blood flow is must. When blood flow decreases because of dehydration(>90% of our blood is water), as occurs in diarrhea, vomiting, low fluid intake- blood flow decreases, leading to decreased kidney function and hence high urea level.
If serum creatinine(another test for kidney function) is nearly normal and urea decreases after giving fluids, this indicates that kidneys are normal as such but the main problem is dehydration.
In short, here we need not worry about kidneys, but have to look for causes of recurrent dehydration.
This can happen in frequent vomiting or vomiting, improperly prepared formula feed and rarely some metabolic disorders. From given details, it is difficult to comment on the cause here.
Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further.
Take care
Regards,
Dr. Muhammed Aslam TK
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