Pre- and Post-Dialysis Correlations of Serum α- Amylase, Creatinine and Urea in Chronic Renal Failure Patients

Increased serum α-amylase level has been reported in chronic renal failure (CRF) patients undergoing haemodialysis even in the absence of pancreatic disease. Nonetheless, conflicting results and explanations for such increase persist in literatures. To this effect, the main endeavour of this study was to evaluate status of serum α-amylase in CRF patients, currently on hemodialysis (pre-dialysis and post-dialysis) and to delineate any correlations between urea, creatinine and α-amylase level in the same sub-groups. Fifty chronic renal failure patients, aged between 20-80 years undergoing routine haemodialysis, were recruited in the study. Blood samples were collected from each patient weekly for one month in which serum α-amylase, urea and creatinine levels were determined. Paired differences were evaluated with the paired samples t -test and statistical significance of the variables was established at the level p < 0.05. Linear regression models were also tested for any relationship between pre-dialysis and post-dialysis samples. The major finding of this study was the significant decrease (p < 0.05) in serum urea and creatinine levels in post-dialysis samples and a significant increase (p < 0.05) in post-dialysis serum α-amylase levels. However, there was no direct correlation between serum α-amylase and urea in both pre-dialysis (R = 0.09) and post-dialysis (R = -0.13) samples or creatinine in pre-dialysis (R = 0.26) and post-dialysis (R = 0.16) samples. This present study tends to show that serum α-amylase had a poor correlation with both urea and creatinine in pre-dialysis and post-dialysis samples. The obtained data corroborates to some extent with results of previous cross-sectional studies, to the effect that there is a significant increase that occurs in serum α-amylase and a significant decrease in both serum urea and creatinine in post-dialysis samples. Possible mechanisms for this increase are discussed herein. Keywords - Dialysis; Serum; α-Amylase; Creatinine; Urea; Chronic Renal Failure