International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | August 2016 | Vol 4 | Issue 8 Page 3402 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Tagore PK et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2016 Aug;4(8):3402-3406 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Research Article Correlates of microalbuminuria in hypertensive patients of a tertiary care teaching hospital of Central India Praveen Kumar Tagore 1 , Archana Gupta 1 , Dewesh Kumar 2 *, Moorat Singh Yadav 1 INTRODUCTION Hypertension is a disease that affects about one billion individuals worldwide. 1 It increases the risk for development of cerebral, cardiac, and renal events. Although our understanding of the pathophysiology of the elevated arterial pressure has increased, in 90-95% of cases the etiology is still largely unknown. Patient with arterial hypertension and no definable cause are said to have primary, essential or idopathic hypertension. Micro- albuminuria, a biomarker of endothelial dysfunction, is associated with increased cardiovascular, renal, and cerebrovascular morbidity and mortality. Its presence in hypertension, even in the setting of normal renal function, confers additional risk for cardio-vascular disease. Micro- albuminuria is a common finding in diabetes and hypertension, respectively, the first and second leading causes of end-stage renal disease. Micro-albuminuria (MA) is one of the earliest indications of kidney injury in patients with diabetes mellitus and hypertension and is associated with high incidence of cardiovascular morbidity. 2 Micro-albuminuria possibly reflects a state of increased renal endothelial permeability and is considered an early marker of diffuse endothelial dysfunction. [3] Micro-albuminuria is the excretion in urine ABSTRACT Background: Although the prevalence of hypertension is high in India, the relationship between micro-albuminuria and target organ damage in hypertension is not well studied. Hence this study aims to study the prevalence of micro- albuminuria in patients of hypertension and its correlation with other cardiovascular risk factors. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done in 112 essential hypertension non-diabetic patients presented at a tertiary care hospital of Madhya Pradesh, India who fulfilled inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria during a calendar year. The diagnosis of essential hypertension was made by the study physician after complete medical history, physical examination and routine biochemical analysis of blood and urine. The data was analysed using SPSS version 20 and Mann Whitney U and Chi-square test was used for quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Results: The total number of patients having micro-albuminuria was 26 and the prevalence came out to be 23.21%. The mean age of micro-albuminuric patients was less compared to non-microalbuminuric patients (p<0.05). The systolic, diastolic blood pressure and cholesterol levels were found to be higher but was statistically insignificant whereas body mass index (BMI) and duration of disease was statistically higher (p<0.05) amongst the cases having micro-albumin in their urine. Conclusions: The prevalence of micro-albuminuria increases with the increase in duration, stages /severity of hypertension. Micro-albuminuria may be considered as a marker of adverse cardiovascular risk profile such as LVH and hyperlipidemia. High BMI, smoking and advanced stages of retinopathy are also the risk factors of micro- albuminuria. Keywords: Essential hypertension, Micro-albuminuria, Target organ damage, Cardiovascular risk factors 1 Department of Medicine, Gaja Raja Medical College, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India 2 Department of Community Medicine and Family Medicine, AIIMS Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India Received: 12 June 2016 Accepted: 02 July 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Dewesh Kumar, E-mail: dr.dewesh@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20162301