RESEARCH ARTICLE Prevalence of microalbum M a Background Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) guidelines

ratio (ACR).DR CongoFull list of author information is available at the end of the articleThe prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is high in the African HIV infected population [1,2] where late referral to hospital and scarce possibilities of renal re-placement therapy are well known. The early detection of CKD would provide the opportunity to implement strategies known to slow CKD progression [3,4]. Thus, the identification of overt proteinuria or even microalbu-minuria, might be an important tool for the early detec-tion of CKD in HIV-infected individuals [5,6]. The on the management of chronic kidney disease in HIV-positive patients recommend the use of a urine dipstick, with a threshold for detection of renal disease at 1+ pro-teinuria. When dipstick is ≥ 1, a quantification of protein-uria is recommended. Currently, this relies on the albumin/ creatinine ratio (ACR) measured on a spot of urine [7,8]. However, in many emerging countries, the dipstick remains the only method used for the evaluation of proteinuria. Nevertheless, it is recognized that dipsticks may have poor sensitivity in detecting low-grade proteinuria [9]. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the prevalence of proteinuria in HIV-positive patients and to assess the diagnostic value of urinary dipstick as screen-ing test for proteinuria compared with the albumin/cre