[hollykatew]

Hello everybody, thanks for clicking onto my thread.

My 2.5 year old GSD Vyvyan has had several blood test results over the past year, show that she has abnormal kidney values and low glucose levels. Her vets (one a normal vet and one a internal medicine specialist) don't seem as worried as I am. She's recently had diahrea and vomiting, but that has cleared up with a special (and balanced) fish and potatoes diet.
She doesn't have the following: addisons disease, EPI, Pancreatitis, a bacterial/parasite infection in her digestive system, or abnormal vitamin B12 levels.
She does have itchy skin. She initially broke out in lumps on her face, over a year ago, which went away after 1 month, but the itchiness has stayed.
She's healthy just by looking at her - hasn't lost weight, if anything, put a bit of muscle on, and is bright and alert.
Her urine is concentrated well, she's drinking what I would call enough/normal. She has odd urination habits though-she seems more frequent and bigger bursts, yet that could be due to the high water content in the fish and potatoes diet. Urine is pretty smelly however, green/yellow in colour. She occasionally has the habit of urinating, successfully and a lot, then over the course of a half and hour, will continually try to urinate again, up to 3/4 times, although nothing, or barely anything will come out. Have spoken to vets about this, done several urinalysis's, but nothing abnormal in her urine.

I do not want my dog to continue down a path towards kidney failure if I can help it. I think from the little I've read, that a low phosphorus diet, not necessarily protein, helps prevent kidney damage. Is it possible to make this home cooked or can you only get low phosphorus diets in dry food?
Is it worth going onto a low phosphorus diet 'just in case', considering phosphorus is so important in bone health along with calcium and I suppose so many other things? Dw, Will be asking these questions to the specialist as well, when we return on Monday not this week but the next.

Also, anyone else with dogs with kidney disease, is this how your dog started out before your dogs' organs began to fail?

Will definitely be getting the spec to explain the reason behind Vyv's results, but would love anyone's opinion.
Thanks so much,
Holly and Vyvyan.

PS:
The abnormal parts of the results, Test results taken 19/4/12

Red cell count - 9.52 (normal 5.5-8.5)
Haemoglobin - 229 (120-180)
Hct- 0.65 (0.37-0.55)
Albumin - 40 (24-38)
Alk Phos - 1 (10-120)
Urea - 10 (3.6-8.9)
Creatine - 131 (43-129)
Calcium - 2.86 (2.1-2.8)
Preserved Glucose - 3.1 (3.3-6.7)

The abnormal parts of the results in the blood test done on 10/6/2011
Red Cell Count - 9.15 (5.5-8.5)
Haemoglobin - 217 (120-180)
Hct - 0.68 (0.37-0.55)
White Cell Count - 317 (320-360)
Urea - 12.4 (3.6-8.9)
Albumin - 39 (24-38)
T. Bil. - 1 (2-15)
Creatine - 153 (48-109)
Phosphate - 3.49 (0.87-2.1)
CK. - 600 (50 - 400)
Preserved Glucose - 3.2 (3.3 - 6.7)

 

[sassafras]

You need to know the concentration of the urine to really evaluate how significant the changes in kidney values on bloodwork are. The reason is there are three general groups of problems that can cause kidney values to be elevated: Pre-renal (usually slight dehydration, in which the urine should be very concentrated), Renal (true diseases of the kidneys, urine will be usually be dilute in a specific range called isosthenuric), and Post-Renal (usually an obstructed or "blocked" animal which is not the case here).

There is no true "normal" for the concentration of urine, although typically a dog or cat's urine on a random sample is fairly concentrated. As you know, if you have a day where you drink a lot of water, your urine will be dilute but if you have a day where you don't drink much water, or if you're hungover/dehydrated or whatever, your urine is very concentrated. So it's best to think of concentration of urine as "appropriate" or "inappropriate". If your dog's concentration is appropriate for her blood work, that might be why your vets are not alarmed, because that means her kidneys are working fine and the blood work changes are pre-renal (i.e. not due to kidney disease). If your dog has had several urinalyses done, you should be able to ask them what the concentration is (usually called urine specific gravity) and ask them to explain the results together.

Hope that helps.

 

[Amaryllis]

It's also helpful to know what effects what in a test. Nothing is in a vacuum. For example, I once had a test in which my c3 was elevated, but my c4 was lowered. Turns out, if you get a cold, one goes up and the other goes down. It looks alarming, but it's not.

You have a right to ask the vet to explain the results to you, and what would cause them.