What causes hypoalbuminemia?

The human body has normal levels of albumin, but due to severe dehydration and frequent illnesses, people's health is greatly damaged, so many people often suffer from hypoalbuminemia. This is because the synthesis rate of albumin is low. Chronic liver disease often occurs, which leads to a low level. It can also be considered that it is due to malnutrition or poor absorption and digestion, genetic defects, and abnormal loss of albumin. These will cause this problem. As long as everyone can find the right reasons in life, actively receive treatment, and choose coping methods according to pathological needs, they can avoid albumin causing harm to the human body.

Increased plasma albumin is less common, but it is diagnostically useful for monitoring hemoconcentration in cases of severe water loss.

Hypoalbuminemia is common in many diseases and may have the following causes:

(1) Due to decreased albumin synthesis: This is common in acute or chronic liver diseases. However, due to the long half-life of albumin, the decrease in plasma albumin concentration may not be obvious in some patients with acute liver disease.

(2) Due to malnutrition or malabsorption.

(3) Genetic defects: Aalbuminemia is a very rare metabolic defect. The plasma albumin level is often lower than 1 g/L. However, there may be no symptoms (such as edema), which may be partly due to the compensatory increase in globulin content in the blood vessels.

(4) Increased albumin catabolism due to tissue damage (surgery or trauma) or inflammation (infectious disease).

(5) Abnormal loss of albumin: Albumin is lost in the urine due to nephrotic syndrome, chronic glomerulonephritis, diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, etc. Sometimes more than 5g of protein can be excreted in the urine every day, which exceeds the compensatory capacity of the liver. A certain amount of protein may also be lost from the intestine in ulcerative colitis and other intestinal inflammations or tumors. Large amounts of protein can be lost from the skin in burns and exudative dermatitis.

(6) Abnormal distribution of albumin: For example, ascites caused by portal hypertension contains a large amount of protein, which leaks from the blood vessels into the abdominal cavity.