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New Economic and Faster Urine Test may Replace Need for Blood Samples

by Dr. Trupti Shirole on May 28 2015 9:14 AM

New Economic and Faster Urine Test may Replace Need for Blood Samples
Do you get willies when the nurse pulls out the needle to draw blood for testing purpose? Here’s a good news for you- scientists have now developed a new urine testing method, that is not only economic, but is faster and could reduce need for blood samples. This new testing method has been developed by Ken Marcus at Clemson University and his students.
Proteins in urine, for example, could help detect early signs of coronary heart disease (CHD), tell whether the body is rejecting a transplanted kidney and show whether someone has sleeping sickness. Marcus said, "The trouble with testing urine is that it’s awash in salt. It can be tricky to isolate the proteins that act as biomarkers. Those biomarkers are the clues that tell whether the patient is sick or has ingested a drug."

In a review of the article, Professor Youhe Gao of Beijing Normal University wrote, "The method may have more profound implications than the authors have claimed, simply because urine is more important than most biomarker researchers realize. Urine accumulates all kinds of changes and should be a better biomarker source than blood."

Marcus said, "The new method should also make it easier to test urine samples from babies. One of the challenges now is getting a large enough sample. But the new method requires only a few microliters of urine."

The study has been published by the Proteomics-Clinical Applications.

Source-Medindia


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