Determination of glucosuria, an obsolete form of self-monitoring in diabetes?

During the last few years we have got improved and cheaper test materials for blood glucose determination. Self-monitoring of blood glucose has become common and urine tests have appeared more obsolete and useless than ever. Before we abandon urine tests we wanted to compare blood and urine glucose and also evaluate the opinion of our patients. A comparison of 301 parallel blood and urine glucose determinations showed a good correlation. In only 5.0% of the samples was the blood glucose above 10 mmol/l without glucosuria and in 9.7% of the samples the blood glucose was below 10 mmol/l but still with glucose in the parallel urine test. Anonymous questionnaires were answered by 94 juvenile diabetics aged between 7-25 yr. Carelessness or "cheating" had sometimes occurred in 10-20% of them. An overwhelming majority preferred daily urine test and a sporadic blood test to regular blood glucose monitoring. Urine tests seem to have a place together with blood glucose determinations in the management of juvenile diabetes.