What does Increase of Creatinine Mean?

When it comes to increase of creatinine, healthy people are not familiar with it. But patients with renal diseases know it very well, because there are creatinine indexes in tests and sometimes there are increase or decrease of creatinine levels, which show that there is something wrong with their kidneys and they should take some treatments. Then what does increase of creatinine mean?

Serum creatinine concentration depends on the glomerular filtration function. But serum creatinine is not consistent with creatinine clearance rate, creatinine clearance rate being more sensitive than serum creatinine. When the glomerular filtration rate drops by more than 50%, serum creatinine begins to increase. Therefore, when the serum creatinine is obviously higher than normal, it shows that your renal function is damaged severely.

Due to the large renal reserve capacity, at early stage of renal diseases, serum creatinine concentration is not elevated generally. When the glomerular filtration rate drops by at least 50%, serum creatinine concentration would be found increased, so it has poor sensitivity. Once serum creatinine increases continuously, it shows that the prognosis is not good.


Increase of creatinine usually appears in acute or chronic glomerulonephritis, polycystic kidney diseases and other renal diseases. When the glomerular filtration function decreases caused by above diseases, serum creatinine concentration still shows normal at early or mild damage of glomerular filtration function, which is because that storage capacity and compensatory ability of kidneys are still very strong. Only when the glomerular filtration rate drops to 1/3 of normal, would blood creatinine values rise significantly.