ABSTRACT
Diabetic nephropathy is the main cause of the increased morbidity and mortality among patients with Type 1 diabetes [1,2,3]. In recent years, it has been shown that a slightly elevated urinary albumin excretion rate (microalbuminuria) is an early predictor for later development of overt diabetic nephropathy [4,5,6,7] and is associated with elevated arterial blood pressure [8,9,10,11,12]. Based on recent literature, the reported prevalence of microalbuminuria in paediatric populations varies from 4.3 to 21% (Table 1a+b). Consequently, microalbuminuria is the first easily identifiable sign of risk of incipient diabetic nephropathy and other vascular complications of the disease. Treatment and intervention consensus guidelines have already been developed for adults [13] and it is equally important to set up a uniform intervention programme for treatment of microalbuminuria in adolescents with Type 1 diabetes [93].
