A very bad sign.
Purple urine (Photo: Dovrat Kaplan)
Inflammation, dehydration or kidney disease - the urine and the color of the urine are used as a diagnostic tool that may indicate diseases, so over the years it has become one of the most common tests.
Urine tests make it possible to diagnose diseases, many times even before accompanying symptoms appear.
Because of this, it is performed frequently - also in the various clinics in the community, when the attending physician sends us for periodic examinations, and also during hospitalization, because it can testify not only to an existing condition, but also to a possible deterioration, which may be preventable.
Yellowish, orange, red and even brown are familiar colors, each of which gives different indications about our medical condition, but what do we do when the urine is purple?
In an article recently published in the Journal of Clinical and Medical Images, a case was described of an 88-year-old female patient who was hospitalized at the Kaplan Medical Center from the Klalit Group.
The woman had a medical history of high blood pressure, chronic renal failure and dementia.
The doctors monitored the amount and color of her urine, using a catheter.
On the third day of hospitalization, her urine surprisingly turned purple, and a day later she died.
"In all my 30 years as a doctor I have never seen anything like this"
The purple bladder syndrome was first described in the medical literature in 1978. The prevalence of the phenomenon is not clear, but it is clear that it is rare and not common among the general population.
A recent medical literature review on the subject described 88 articles describing 112 patients whose urine turned purple.
The population at risk was described in the article as elderly women, suffering from constipation, bedridden and suffering from kidney disease.
"The color of the urine is useful for diagnosing a variety of diseases, and therefore in situations of dehydration, the daily urine output is very important, and we monitor it. Red urine, for example, can be caused by a disease known as porphyria, which is a hereditary metabolic disease. Jaundice can lead to dark urine. But every 30 In my years as a doctor, this is the first case of purple colored urine that I have come across," explained Prof. Steven Melnick, a gastroenterologist and director of Internal Medicine Department III at the Kaplan Medical Center, who wrote the article.
"The first tendency of a less experienced team is to think that this was caused by an external factor that colored the urine and damaged the sample, but this color has a medical explanation," added Prof. Melnik, "In people with severe constipation, bacteria in the intestines such as Klebsiella, Proteus and others originating from the digestive system , cause infections in the urinary tract and cause the urine to be colored purple."
The expert explained that tryptophan amino acid, which is found in the digestive system, is metabolized by intestinal bacteria to indole acid and then in the liver it undergoes another chemical change and becomes an indoxyl sulfate toxin.
"This substance can undergo decomposition and is expressed in a purple color," said Prof. Melnik, "the prognosis of patients with purple urine is not good as a result of the risk factors that appear mainly in chronically hospitalized patients."
However, "it is important to understand that this is not something that can happen to anyone, and it is a very rare phenomenon. But if we know someone who is in the risk population, it is worth following the color of the urine a little more closely as well," he added.
health
news
Tags
urine
Urine Test
urinary infection
germs
