PDF OnlyAnother look at the relationship between protein intake and dialysis dose.Uehlinger, D E Author Information Department of Medicine, University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology : JASN 7(1):p 166-168, January 1996. | DOI: 10.1681/ASN.V71166 Free Metrics Abstract It seems reasonable to postulate that an observed relationship between dialysis dose and protein intake reflects improved nutrition with correction of uremic symptoms. This article demonstrates a purely statistical association between the two parameters--protein intake, expressed as normalized protein catabolic rate (NPCR), and dialysis dose quantified as KT/V [the product of urea clearance (K) and treatment time (T) divided by the distribution volume of urea (V)] in peritoneal dialysis. The use of random samples from independent normal distributions of K, V, and urea generation rate (G) for the calculation of KT/V and NPCR reveals that a statistical association is introduced when both protein intake and dialysis dose are normalized proportional to a common distribution V. Not the normalizing parameter V per se, but rather the variability of V accounts for the introduction of this statistical artifact. Copyright © 1996 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
