Comparative evaluation of urinary dipstick and pH-meter for cattle urine pH measurement

Urinary dipsticks are often used for the diagnosis of kidney, liver, metabolic, and urogenital diseases in cattle clinical practice for the simplicity of use and ease of access. The aims of the present study were to evaluate the agreement between urinary dipsticks and pH-meter for the urine pH in dairy cattle, and also to compare the urine pH before and after centrifugation from each method. The agreement between urine dipstick and pH-meter methods before and after centrifuge were calculated by Passing-Bablok regression analysis demonstrated constant differences (intercept) at 0.60 and -1.01 and positive proportional differences (slope) at 0.94 and 1.13; respectively. Total bias estimated by Bland-Altman plot analysis before (0.20) and after (0.14) centrifuge were lower than the acceptable bias in urine samples. The regression analysis of this study emphasized that the urinary dipstick can be used to determine the cattle urine.