Evaluation of the URiSCAN 2 ACR Strip to estimate the urine albumin/creatinine ratios.

BACKGROUND: The urine albumin/creatinine ratio (ACR) test is used to screen patients with chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases that put them at an increased risk of developing kidney disease. Here, we evaluated the performance of the URiSCAN 2 ACR Strip (URiSCAN; YD diagnostics, Yongin, Korea), a semiquantitative point-of-care testing (POCT) assay, and we compared to an existing POCT assay and a quantitative assay. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 1,020 random urine specimens were analyzed using the semiquantitative URiSCAN 2 ACR Strip and semiquantitative CLINITEK Microalbumin 2 Strip (CLINITEK; Siemens, New York, USA). We evaluated the precision of the URiSCAN 2 ACR Strip and compared the results of the ACR obtained from URiSCAN to those of CLINITEK with the quantitative results of a quantitative assay as a reference. RESULTS: The precision evaluation of the URiSCAN revealed a range between the cutoff (C50 )-20% and C50 +20% bounds, the C5 -C95 interval, with 85.8% confidence. URiSCAN and CLINITEK showed sensitivity and specificity of 87.7% and 72.2%, and 90.2% and 83.0%, respectively. The concordance rates of URiSCAN with CLINITEK and the quantitative assay were 75.6% and 79.1%, respectively. The concordance rate in the abnormal range (≥30 mg/g) between URiSCAN and the quantitative assay were higher than that between CLINITEK and the quantitative assay (78.8% vs 75.4%). CONCLUSIONS: URiSCAN showed good precision and comparable sensitivity with lower specificity than those of CLINITEK.