Urine Samples as a Monitoring Tool

Testing urine of diabetic dogs and cats can be used to look for:

• Hyperglycemia in a stable diabetic patient
• Ketones
• Recurrent hypoglycaemia

Glucosuria reflects hyperglycaemia in the past and does not indicate the current status or reflect hypoglycaemia. Glucosuria is not a very reliable method of monitoring diabetes mellitus and should not be used on its own to adjust an animal’s insulin dose.

Hyperglycaemia

Urine monitoring can be used once an animal is known to have blood glucose concentrations in an acceptable range. In this case it is a quick easy method of detecting hyperglycaemia. This should then be investigated further by measuring blood glucose concentrations.

Ketones

Urine monitoring is a quick and easy method of detecting ketones (ketonuria) and hence a potential emergency situation – See diabetic ketoacidosis.

Hypoglycaemia

In diabetic dogs that are well controlled the urine should be free of glucose for most of each 24 hour period.

Monitoring of urine for glucose can be useful in diabetic dogs that are not yet stable and that have problems with recurrent hypoglycaemia. Here it is used to identify the absence of glucose. For example, a dog that normally has a trace of glucose in urine that has no glucose in the morning sample persistently, the insulin dose can be reduced.