((( Latest Protein Spotlight issue: liquid yellow )))
August 2024
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When the opportunity to write a piece on urine arose, I thought
"wonderful, here's something we can all relate to". I had no idea,
however, where it was going to lead me: from Hippocrates, uroscopy and
the tradition of Hebridean waulking to alchemy, quacks and The Pisse
Prophet, a 17th century satire. Very early on, physicians took a keen
interest in what each one of us exudes at least twice a day.
Gradually, urine became a sort of medical manual per se in which the
overall state of health of its host could simply be read - so much so
that physicians began to feel that it was unnecessary to even meet
their patients. Still today, urine tests help doctors form their
diagnoses, but they certainly do not exclude carrying out other tests
or talking to their patients. Urine has many tales to tell - depending
on its colour, its scent, its molecular composition. In healthy
individuals, it is usually a shade of pale yellow owing to the yellow
pigment found in it: urobilin. Urobilin is just another component of
the total waste product that forms urine and whose presence depends on
an enzyme of bacterial origin: biliverdin reductase.
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